Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Italy Antonio Tajani said on March 5 in an interview with the newspaper Il Messaggero about the need to prevent the escalation of the conflict in Ukraine associated with the threat of the use of nuclear weapons.
In a conversation with journalists, Tajani positively assessed the short contact between Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken on the sidelines of the G20.
Blinken then said that during the conversation he asked Lavrov to accept the US proposal for a prisoner exchange in order to release Whelan, and also called on Russia to cancel the decision to suspend participation in the START.
At the same time, as the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova clarified, there were no negotiations between Lavrov and Blinken at the G20 summit, they talked “on the go”.
“Italy is in the forefront in supporting Ukraine and finding a peaceful solution, but <…> a just peace cannot mean capitulation of Kyiv,” Tajani said.
On March 2, G20 foreign ministers also declared the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons unacceptable.
In late February, The Wall Street Journal reported that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron appealed to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to negotiate with Moscow.
In addition, British Prime Minister’s National Security Adviser Tim Barrow considered it necessary to prevent a protracted conflict in Ukraine and speed up the supply of weapons to Kyiv.
Russia continues a special operation to protect Donbass, whose residents refused to recognize the results of the 2014 coup d’état in Ukraine. The decision to hold it was made by the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin against the backdrop of the aggravation of the situation in the region due to the shelling of Ukrainian troops.
