Italy is to give Ukraine another
Samp-T air defence system to shoot down Russian missiles,
Premier Giorgia Meloni said on the sidelines of the NATO summit
in Washington on Tuesday night.
Meloni made the announcement shortly after United States
President Joe Biden said the US is supplying Kyiv with Patriot
missiles along with Germany and Romania.
"We really focused on an issue that is extremely important,
which is air defence because it means defending civilians above
all and the critical infrastructure that Russia is continuing to
attack, as we saw yesterday with a paediatric hospital struck in
Kyiv and the cancer-affected children in the streets," said
Meloni after an attack she had described as "horrible".
Meloni added that Italy will get up to defence spending of 2% of
GDP as requested by the United States and NATO according to its
own timeframe and financial possibilities, given budget
constraints.
She said that Italy "will keep faith with its commitments" to
spend 2% of GDP on defence "obviously with the times and
possibilities that we have" and also considering "the country's
overall commitment to NATO", where we are "among the largest
contributors of personnel in almost all missions and
peacekeeping operations because our know-how is in great
demand".
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