Weapons from Italia to Kyiv? Controversy erupts. Crosetto: the decree will be submitted to COPASIR when it is ready

Francesco Silvestri, an MP for the Five Star Movement and leader of the party’s delegation on the Foreign Affairs Committee, on the other hand, attacked the government, pointing out that ‘Minister Crosetto has been saying for months that Italia is “unprotected” in the event of any attacks, yet it appears his government is intent on supplying weapons to Ukraine. Is this how he intends to protect Italia? Crosetto must clarify the situation because, according to a newspaper report today, the government has apparently decided to provide military support to Kyiv, which could be formalised in a forthcoming decree’.

Daniela Ruffino, an MP for Azione, then spoke on the matter, calling on the Prime Minister to provide clarity to Parliament and the public regarding the “type of aid that Italia is providing and will provide to Ukraine to resist Russian aggression”, adding that, should the rumours published by *La Repubblica* be confirmed, “it would be good news for the country’s honour”.

Crosetto addressed the controversy in a statement published on the Ministry of Defence’s website. The Minister clarified that Parliament ‘has authorised the Government to send, including for 2026 – as had already been done in all previous years – aid (of both a civilian and military nature) to Ukraine’, but that ‘no alleged financial resources were ever sent, but rather “goods” and “items” of various types and nature. To mention just a few of the civilian items, these included over 300 electric generators and all manner of machinery for paediatric hospitals’.

When an aid ‘package’ is put together, the Ministry of Defence and the relevant government departments ‘draft a decree, request permission from the Chair of COPASIR to present it to its members, present it, and only once all these steps have been completed (not merely formalities, but substantive procedures, given that we live in a Republic where sovereignty rests with Parliament) is the decree adopted, in the prescribed form of a secret decree, which enables all members of COPASIR (which includes representatives from both the government and the opposition) to be fully and thoroughly informed of its contents and to have a complete understanding of it, as is only right’, explained the Minister of Defence.

Crosetto went on to conclude that this has been the approach taken by every government to date to ensure transparency, and that the procedure will be the same on this occasion too. In the statement, the minister finally defended the government’s position regarding the conflict between Kyiv and Moscow: ‘The offer, made jointly with the French and the British, to provide Ukraine with the technology to build its own air defence system is nothing new and was a common-sense decision.’

The Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary Antonio Tajani, when questioned by journalists on the sidelines of the Rimini Meeting, reiterated that ‘the Ministry of Defence is drawing up another package and, naturally, before it is submitted, it will go through COPASIR as has always been the case. We’ll see what the timeframe will be, but it will be fairly swift.” Tajani went on to state that Italia is committed to “supporting Ukraine, and Ukraine cannot be supported solely by sending weapons”. According to the Deputy Prime Minister, in fact, Italia’s support for Kyiv “is multifaceted. When a people have to face the winter, perhaps, rather than needing weapons, they also need electric generators and resources to help them get through the winter at such a difficult time”.