The United States is calling on Italy to transfer additional air defense assets to Ukraine as soon as possible, especially the Italian-French-made SAMP / T complex.
The Italian government is still finalizing the sixth package of defense aid to Ukraine, after which the parliament will be informed about it, Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said, Ansa wrote.
“We are also discussing with the French the improvement from a technical point of view of sending air defense systems based on the joint technology of Rome and Paris,” said Tajani.
Commenting on the call from National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, Tajani said that “negotiations in Washington are ongoing and normal, we are an important interlocutor, but there is no discussion of weapons.”
“We must continue to work for the good of the world, but there are signs that do not allow us to be optimistic: at the moment there are no real manifestations of openness on the part of Russia,” said Tajani.
Let’s recall that earlier it was reported that the United States is urging Italy to transfer additional air defense systems to Ukraine as soon as possible, especially the SAMP / T complex of Italian-French production.
At the political level, the commitment to transfer these air defense systems to Ukraine was made a few weeks ago, but the Italian government has not yet approved the decision on this in the next, sixth order on military assistance to Ukraine.
The SAMP/T has limited capabilities against ballistic missiles, but it is a powerful system against aircraft, drones and cruise missiles and is thus capable of defending even a large city like Kyiv.
Rome has five SAMP/T batteries and an unmanned training battery with launchers. The previous Italian government, led by Mario Draghi, wanted to transfer to Ukraine the exact training battery, which was modernized in a few months to fight ballistic missiles.
Source: korrespondent
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