Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni stood by earlier comments from the country’s president likening modern day Russia to Nazi Germany, adding the Kremlin had offended “the entire Italian nation” after a spokesperson blasted the comparison on Friday.
President Sergio Mattarella drew a parallel between the “wars of aggression” that prompted World War II and the “current Russian aggression against Ukraine” in a speech last week, saying “this was the project of the Third Reich in Europe.”
Kremlin spokesperson Maria Zakharova belatedly condemned the comparison on Friday, calling Mattarella’s comments “blasphemous inventions.”
Meloni shot back the same day, standing by Mattarella’s remarks.
“The insults of the spokeswoman … offend the entire Italian nation, which the head of state represents,” Meloni said. “I express my full solidarity, as well as that of the entire government, to President Mattarella, who has always firmly condemned the aggression perpetrated against Ukraine.”
The tense exchange came at the end of a fraught week that left European leaders scrambling over the next steps in the Ukraine war. Leaders rushed to show solidarity with Ukraine and adjust to a post-American protection world in the hours since the Trump administration’s new approach to Russia’s war.
The U.S. gave Europe whiplash this week after U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth dismissed goals to retake land seized by Russia as “illusory” and rejected Ukrainian membership in NATO. President Donald Trump also said he had launched negotiations with Russian leader Vladimir Putin on ending the war — effectively sidelining both Ukraine and Europe in the process.
At the Munich Security Conference Friday, Vice President JD Vance downplayed Russia’s threat to European security, saying instead that the greater threat is a “retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values.”
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