Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini has issued a sharp rebuke to French President Emmanuel Macron’s suggestion of sending Western troops to Ukraine, using a Milanese idiom to tell him to go himself.
Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a visit to Via Bolla in Milan, the League party leader stated, “You put on your helmet, your flak jacket, your rifle, and you go to Ukraine.” The phrase “taches al tram” he used is a local expression meaning “go attach yourself to a tram,” a dismissive way of telling someone to deal with a problem alone.
Shifting to U.S. politics, Salvini expressed a positive view of Donald Trump’s unconventional methods. “I think Trump, with his ways that can sometimes seem brusque or unorthodox, is succeeding where everyone else has failed: getting Putin and Zelensky back to the table. Something that hasn’t happened in years,” he added. “Then it will be up to them to choose the meeting point. Surely, European armies, European rearmament, and common European debts to buy missiles or various ‘Macronades’ are outdated concepts.”
Commenting on the possibility of a trilateral meeting between Zelensky, Putin, and Trump, Salvini noted, “I don’t know if it will truly happen in Budapest, at the home of the villain Orban, the sovereigntist Orban, the ally of Salvini and Le Pen. If those who the left sees as villains achieve peace, then chapeau. Therefore, we should not disturb those who are working for peace. The warmongers and bomb-throwers should be silent.”
Salvini concluded by firmly rejecting any possibility of Italian soldiers being sent to the Ukrainian front. “Absolutely not. If Macron wants to go, he can, but he should go alone, I think, because not a single Frenchman would follow him, and certainly not an Italian soldier. This is my position as Deputy Prime Minister, as a minister, and as secretary of the League. Our children will not go to fight in Ukraine, that’s for sure.”
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