Yesterday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg also arrived at the Hotel Quisisana in Capri, where the meeting of the G7 foreign ministers is taking place and will end today. And he met the head of diplomacy of Kyiv, Dmytro Kuleba, who was also invited to the meeting of the world’s leaders yesterday afternoon, the one whose agenda was aid to the Ukrainian resistance against Russia’s aggression. Kuleba said what he has been repeating for months, but which since last Saturday – that is, since Iran launched the attack against Israel, and the anti-missile and drone systems and an international coalition have rendered it almost harmless – has become a tragic reality : We need an air defense like the Israeli one to protect us from Russian attacks, repeats Kuleba.
Yesterday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg also arrived at the Hotel Quisisana in Capri, where the meeting of the G7 foreign ministers is taking place and will end today. And he met the head of diplomacy of Kyiv, Dmytro Kuleba, who was also invited to the meeting of the world’s leaders yesterday afternoon, the one whose agenda was aid to the Ukrainian resistance against Russia’s aggression. Kuleba said what he has been repeating for months, but which since last Saturday – that is, since Iran launched the attack against Israel, and the anti-missile and drone systems and an international coalition have rendered it almost harmless – has become a tragic reality : We need an air defense like the Israeli one to protect us from Russian attacks, repeats Kuleba.
To defend the Ukrainian skies we need the only two systems that currently intercept and neutralize Russian ballistic missiles: the American Patriots, of course, but also the SAMP/T, the surface-to-air missile systems developed by the Italian-French consortium Eurosam.
According to diplomatic sources from Il Foglio, Kyiv has been asking Italy for a specific SAMP/T battery for some time: the one that until a few weeks ago was deployed in Slovakia, on the border with Ukraine. The Italian deployment took place at the beginning of April last year according to the NATO defensive mission called Enhanced Vigilance Activity, and served to replace the American Patriots for a period of one year. Slovak President Robert Fico published a video on March 2 in which he said that the SAMP/T was about to be “withdrawn from Slovakia, because they need it elsewhere.” It is not clear how NATO intends to strengthen Slovakia’s air defense, but what is certain is that the agreement to deploy the Italian system in the country is over.
And it is needed elsewhere. According to sources from the Ministry of Defense, the SAMP/T battery, made up of four launchers and operated by at least 150 Italian soldiers, is necessary for “the protection of the national territory” for the next twenty months: the SAMP/T must be deployed to give coverage at the meeting of heads of state and government in June in Borgo Egnazia, Puglia, “and then for next year’s Jubilee”.
But something could change in the coming weeks, and diplomacy is at work. The commitment to supply air defense systems to Ukraine could be included in the final declaration of the G7 Foreign Ministerial (yesterday the deputies Lia Quartapelle (Pd) and Benedetto della Vedova (+EU) asked the government for information on the case) . And on Capri Stoltenberg spoke explicitly about the Italian-French batteries: “We are working with our allies and asking them to provide air defense systems such as the Franco-Italian SAMP/Ts”. Italy and France already provided a SAMP/T system to Ukraine last year, training Ukrainian soldiers to use it on Italian and French territory. But in January the Russian Defense Ministry announced that it had bombed the SAMP/T and its ammunition depot (the news was never confirmed). The system is considered very useful by the Ukrainians, because the radar intercepts up to one hundred kilometers and the Aster missiles come into action at twenty-five kilometers. Last year, Rome and Paris authorized an order of 700 missiles (2 billion euros) to the manufacturer MBDA, to be allocated to Ukraine, missiles which, however, could not arrive before a year.
Because in addition to the deployment of air defense systems, the problem is above all missiles and ammunition. Yesterday in Capri Kuleba also had a bilateral meeting with the Japanese Foreign Minister Kamikawa: Ukrainian diplomacy is also turning to geographically distant partners to reach solutions. Late last year, in a historic decision, Tokyo circumvented the post-war ban on arms exports and decided to produce and export Patriot missiles to the United States.
