Italian Foreign Minister Giorgio Di Mario launched this Wednesday the alarm of a growing risk of business failure in favor of a diplomatic solution to the crisis in Ukraine, informing Parliament that “the margins are shrinking day by day” to achieve a dialogue initiative that would prevent a war.
The dramatic tone of the information of the Minister of Foreign Affairs came from the last press conference of the Russian leader Vladimir Putin, who extended the claims on the self-proclaimed Philo-Russian republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, which began to be occupied since early Monday morning by Moscow troops , to the entire Donbass region, which remains largely in the hands of the Ukrainian armed forces.
Di Maio recalled that Putin added to his claims the recognition by the US and Europe of the illegal annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea to Russia in 2014.
“We condemn Moscow’s decision to send troops to the territory of the two breakaway republics”, justifying them as “a contingent to maintain peace”.
Di Maio recalled in the Italian Senate that in the Russian siege of Ukraine the current contingent has been reinforced to a size of 170-190 thousand soldiers.
Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio during a session at Parliament in Rome on Wednesday. Photo: EFE
Call for dialogue
“Despite the seriousness of the moment, we want to focus on diplomatic initiatives that can prevent a war,” he said.
While the foreign minister was speaking in the Italian Parliament, it became known that Ukraine had launched the order to general mobilization of all its citizens between 18 and 60 years old.
The purpose of the Kiev government is to increase the armed forces by 200 thousand soldiers to face the Russians.
“We have reaffirmed Italy’s support for the integrity and full sovereignty of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders and have called on the parties involved to return to the negotiating table,” Di Maio said.
“In this situation that can change rapidly, it is important to maintain coordination between the partners of the European Union and with the allies of NATO”, which is the Western military alliance led by the United States with the main European countries plus Canada.
The crisis hits Italy hard for the immediate consequences it can cause to the national economy.
The Covid pandemic produced a drop of around 9% in the economy in 2020, which recovered well by 6.5% last year. But the consequences are very serious due to the impressive rebound in the prices of energy and raw materials, such as agricultural products.
The explosive rise in gas and electricity prices, which are over 50% and promise further rises, has forced the government to launch aid programs for industries and consumers, with subsidies added to those for recovery of economic activity due to the pandemic.
Ukrainian soldiers near the separatist region of Lugansk, this Wednesday. Photo: AFP
Russian gas
The worst focus of the crisis is energy supply. Italy imports more than 40% of its gas consumption from Russia, which in turn buys billions of euros worth of industrial products from it.
After the news on Tuesday of the German decision not to put into operation the great Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia as a first sanction for Moscow’s decision to occupy an area of Ukrainian territory in the southeast of that country, the Italians now face the dilemma what should be its contribution to the sanctions against Putin’s Russia.
In his speech before Parliament to report on the crisis, Foreign Minister Di Maio said that diplomatic initiatives were being suspended. He was referring to the announcement of Prime Minister Mario Draghi’s trip to Moscow, agreed with Putin, but without a precise date.
Draghi, who received the request from Ukrainian President Volodimyr Selensky, said a few days ago that he hoped to obtain a meeting at the Ukrainian leader’s summit with Putin in his management in Moscow, but the Russian attack has made the management obsolete.
A poster for the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, with which Russia planned to send gas to Europe. Photo: AFP
Between Russia and Italy there is a long tradition of good diplomatic and economic relations, which the crisis puts to the test.
Prime Minister Draghi said that Italy fully condemned the Russian attack on Ukraine and proposed urgently prioritizing a diplomatic solution.
As well approved the sanctions, but slipped the suggestion that they will not be applied in the field of energy supplies. Italy not only buys so much gas from Russia, but also supplies itself with a lot of oil.
Although the conviction is growing that Putin accumulated huge foreign exchange reserves that will be necessary if the economic sanctions are consolidated, in addition to those that have been in force since 2014 as a sanction for the annexation of the Crimean peninsula to Russia, part of the Italian analysts highlight the limits of Moscow’s economic resources, which maintains a high level of 63% of exports in energy products.
Italy has a powerful economy with a gross domestic product (GDP) that last year reached 1.6 trillion euros. The Russian does not reach 1.3 billion and competes with Brazil for the condition of eleventh world power.
It is a long way from the two largest countries: the United States, with 19 trillion (millions of millions) of euros, and China, with 12 trillion of national wealth in 2021.
At the European level, the big four are Germany, with 3.5 billion, Great Britain (2.6 billion), France (2.3 billion) and Italy, with 1.6 billion euros of Gross Domestic Product per year.
In theory, if the crisis leads to a kind of economic war supported by sanctions against Russia as an alternative to a frank military confrontation, Moscow’s relative weakness in the face of the impressive Western bloc appears decisive.
military superpower
But home Russia, the largest country in the world with 17 million square kilometers of territory, is also a great military superpower, the second behind the United States, with its huge renewed nuclear arsenal with state-of-the-art hypersonic weapons that dramatically shorten times.
This data explains the repeated Russian will to use even force -and this is the case of the crisis with Ukraine-, to prevent the West from adding ex-communist countries to the NATO military alliance, which bring the most modern atomic weapons to a few minutes of its territory.
Putin maintains that this problem must be considered and resolved now to create a new security balance. This is the profound reason for the attack on Ukraine, carefully planned by a military staff that counts for a lot today.
Its leader, considered a strategic genius, is General Vasily Gerasimov, also Russian Deputy Minister of Defence, whose ideas have the support of the military commanders who direct armed forces restructured by Vladimir Putin in ten years to implement these purposes that now challenge Western power.
This is why Italy has limited room for manoeuvre. Putin himself is conditioned on his decision to rebuild the empire. In 1991 there was “the worst geopolitical catastrophe” of the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
It was written by the Russian leader, who has promised to fight against the Western siege to prevent the rebirth of that lost greatness.
It will be difficult to stop such nationalist momentum with economic sanctions programs, as important as they are.
The deployment of 200,000 soldiers in the siege to “normalize” the rebellious Ukraine in any way, represents the largest military mobilization in Europe since World War II. The bet of Putin, General Gerasimov and theirs is too high. Luce vain hope of a withdrawal under the threat of sanctions. The worst is yet to come.
Rome, correspondent
CB