KYIV (Reuters) – Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni arrived in Kyiv on Tuesday to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, hours after pledging continued military support for Ukraine.
Meloni said she was “honoured” to make the visit as she stepped off a train coming from Poland. Ukrainian officials greeted her with a bunch of flowers.
The Italian leader was expected to visit the war-battered towns of Bucha and Irpin, in the north-western outskirts of Kyiv, before her talks with Zelenskiy.
“I am here to understand the needs of a people fighting for their freedom. It’s always different seeing things with your own eyes and I think it helps Italians understand,” Meloni said in comments carried by Italian public RAI television.
Her trip comes a day after U.S. President Joe Biden visited the Ukrainian capital.
Meloni, who took office in October, had repeatedly said she wanted to go to Kyiv ahead of the Feb. 24 anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year.
Her right-wing government has kept up support for Ukraine, even if junior partners in the coalition, particularly former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, have expressed misgivings.
Stopping off in Warsaw on Monday to meet her Polish counterpart Mateusz Morawiecki, Meloni said Italy and Poland would keep supplying Ukraine with arms.
Italy and France have recently finalised talks over delivery of an advanced air defence system to Kyiv in the spring, but Italian help is unlikely to stretch to supplying war planes.
“I think it is practically impossible that we may send Italian fighter jets,” Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani told Tuesday’s La Stampa newspaper.
(Reporting by Alvise Armellini, editing by Crispian Balmer)
