War in Ukraine, Crosetto: “A common European defense would prevent any attack”

The minister on military conscription: "Wars are fought with professionals, not with kids with a year's service. You have to have an Army, Navy and Air Force"

ROME – “It is necessary to build a common European defense, not to use it in attack, but to prevent it, in case it could come from someone going crazy“. The Minister of Defense, Guido Crosetto, said this, speaking in connection with ‘Mattino 5’. “Building a defense means giving security to countries – continued Crosetto – The requirement for having an orderly life, a democracy, a normal life in each nation is to have security. We must build a defense by putting together all European resources because alone we have neither enough men nor enough structures. We must bring together the Italian army with the German, French, Dutch, Spanish etc. And we must enable them to operate together if necessary, like NATO does for example, making them work together. This is the main way to have security and to avoid war. Europe has never done it because we were content with the Americans doing it, we had the big and powerful brother and he was defending us. The Americans are telling us that it is not a given that they will defend us, on the contrary, they have other interests. Their confrontation in the coming years will be with China and not with Russia. and so they tell us: ‘If you have a problem with Russia, start thinking about it yourself’. From this point of view, Europe will have to think and make choices that are not courageous but very banal. Investing in defense means investing in security and peace. We have to start doing it ourselves, we have never done it, we have to overcome a gap of tens of years”.

MILITARY LEVA, CROSETTO: PROFESSIONALS ARE NEEDED

To the question whether in this context it makes sense to revive the military draft, Crosetto replied: “The wars that are being fought are carried out by professionals. You cannot think of taking kids and making them do a year of military service , then set them aside and recall them if something serious were to break out We need to have the Army, Navy and Air Force made up of professionals who do that and sacrifice their lives for that case of absolute gravity, having a reserve can be called upon, a reserve of semi-professionals like Israel or Switzerland have for example.” On the topic of Ukrainian attacks against Russia with American weapons, the minister said: “I don’t think there have yet been any attacks by Ukraine in Russia also because the reading that was given in Italy was a bit emphasized. Americans have authorized the use of their weapons only towards a single specific target in Russia which is the one from which the missile attacks towards Ukraine start, therefore not in a total, extensive way towards the Russian federation, as some have tried to say. We held the position we have had for two years, that of saying: we provided aid to Ukraine to defend itself from Russian attacks, we allowed Ukraine to use our aid on Ukrainian territory to prevent the Russians from continuing what they are doing As we speak, hundreds of bombs are falling, over 10,000 grenades are falling on Ukraine, so we are helping the country defend itself from this type of attack, we don’t want there to be a further escalation. because the world doesn’t need it, we have always been trying, alongside aid, to open a negotiating table, to convince Russia to start with a truce, as we did with Israel, and then start a dialogue that allows us to restore international law and to restore to Ukraine the dignity of a free state not at war”.