Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini are doing everything to ingratiate themselves with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
But Rome’s man in Kyiv, Ambassador Davide La Cecilia, said people shouldn’t pay attention when Conte and Salvini talk about wanting to end Western sanctions against Russia for its ongoing war against Ukraine, which has killed 13,000 people, or the Kremlin’s invasion and illegal seizure of Crimea in 2014.
“We are not pushing to remove sanctions,” La Cecilia told the Kyiv Post in a May 31 interview, ahead of June 2 Republic Day, the Italian holiday commemorating the 1946 referendum that ended the monarchy.
“We renew sanctions every time they come up. This is a fact,” La Cecilia said. “The other fact is that we are linked to a system of friendship and alliance within NATO and the European Union. It is very important for us to show solidarity with our allies and friends.”
Diplomats are often called on to explain outrageous statements from their capitals, but the up-is-down, black-is-white contrast is as stark as it gets between the Italian ambassador’s reassuring words and the alarming stances of Italy’s two top politicians.
Courting Moscow
Conte visited Moscow in 2018, one of his first visits abroad as prime minister, and is set to welcome Putin this summer in Rome. By contrast, he’s not been to Ukraine and the last Ukrainian presidential visit to Italy was in 2015. Conte as recently as March said that “we are working” to get sanctions removed against Russia because they are ineffective and hurting the Italian economy.
The far-right, Euroskeptic Salvini, who many say is the most powerful politician in Italy, is even more inflammatory.
“I continue to believe that we don’t need sanctions. The issue of their removal unites all decent people,” Salvini told the Russian propaganda outlet Sputnik in May.
He is openly supportive of the Russian annexation of Crimea and has dismissed Ukraine’s EuroMaidan Revolution, which forced Kremlin-backed President Viktor Yanukovych from power in 2014, as a “fake” orchestrated by the U. S. Central Intelligence Agency. In Moscow last year, he said:
“Here, I feel at home.”
When he’s not offending Ukrainians and Americans with his false history, Salvini threatens to deport at least 500,000 “illegal immigrants” from Italy and urges his government to break EU budget rules by running up large budget deficits.
But if the Italian ambassador finds it difficult to square the circle of his superiors’ remarks, he’s not letting on publicly.
Comments of Conte and Salvini about removing sanctions on Russia “must be taken in the context in which they are expressed,” La Cecilia said. “This is maybe a personal opinion. It’s not an opinion expressed in an institutional context … I can assure you we will continue to toe the line and implement the sanctions as long as this is needed.”
At the same time, he said Italy believes that dialogue with Russia is essential “to solve the diplomatic crisis” and that Ukraine understands Italy’s position. He also said Italy will “never” recognize Crimea as part of Russia. “There is no doubt about this,” he said.
‘Next economic miracle’
Despite the lack of recent top-level political visits, trade between the two nations is approaching 5 billion euros yearly. “We recovered the gap that was produced by the crisis in 2013 and 2014,” he said, referring to the time before Ukraine’s EuroMaidan Revolution and Russia’s war knocked Ukraine’s economy into a severe and prolonged recession.
An Italy-Ukraine Business Forum will take place in Rome on June 13 that focuses on three sectors: energy, infrastructure and agriculture.
“What a fantastic country this would be to visit if there were better roads,” the ambassador said. “This is a big, big country; twice as big as Italy and connection is everything. There are companies in Italy that are very well-positioned in construction infrastructure and electronics infrastructure as well.”
And, he said, “we are very much specialized in agricultural machinery, so we can provide key equipment for Ukrainian agriculture.”
The General Confederation of Italian Industry, or Confindustria, will participate on the Italian side. It is the largest business group in the nation. On Ukraine’s side, top-level speakers include: Stepan Kubiv, a deputy prime minister; Anatoly Kinakh, head of the Ukrainian League of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs; and Olga Trofimtseva, the agricultural minister.
The last bilateral trade event took place in January in Kyiv.
“ I believe that Ukraine is the next economic miracle. It’s really a small China in terms of resources, talents and space,” La Cecilia said. “Our companies should be well-positioned to make the most of the moment when the legislation and implementation will start this economic boom.”
Ukrainians in Italy
An estimated 300,000 Ukrainians officially live in Italy. They own businesses, study or work for others. Another 200,000 Ukrainians visited Italy in 2017, taking advantage of visa-free travel begun that year.
“The Ukrainian community in Italy is very welcome. It is the largest Ukrainian community in western Europe and perhaps the second largest after Poland in the European Union,” La Cecelia said. “They are doing well. They are spread all over the peninsula. They are well-integrated and well-accepted. It’s one of the largest foreign communities in Italy.”
Investment low
Ukraine, however, needs to do a better job of creating rule of law and fighting corruption before it will see a big increase in Italian investment. Currently, about 300 Italian firms operate in Ukraine, while a few hundred Italians live in the nation.
“Italian companies are small and medium and they need to be particularly protected,” the ambassador said. “The business environment is fundamental. In this regard, the European Union and G7 ambassadors are trying to promote fight against corruption and increase in rule of law.”
Cultural travels
La Cecilia said he’s not among the ambassadors who have visited every oblast in Ukraine. Instead, Italy has focused on four major cities outside of Kyiv — Kharkiv, Mariupol, Odesa and Lviv.
“We do a lot of things in the cultural area. We have a lot of collaboration with many social institutions. Of course, it’s worth it,” he said, “Our embassy is very busy and small.”
Looking ahead to autumn and winter, Italy is planning a contemporary art event, a week of Italian cuisine with visiting chefs, and a week devoted to the promotion of the Italian language, led by the Italian Cultural Institute.
Evolutionary change
He called Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s defeat of Petro Poroshenko on April 21 an “extremely interesting” president campaign to follow for the way in which the victor skillfully used the internet to directly reach voters, nearly three-fourths of whom cast their ballots for the actor-comedian. While he was not surprised that Poroshenko lost his re-election bid, he said the ex-president should not be judged too harshly.
He worries that elected officials have “less time to deliver to the public opinion before the next political deadline. Everything is very much accelerated.”
As a nation, he said that Ukraine is becoming more transparent — “everything is under the light of the sun or has the capacity to emerge under the light of the sun,” he said, thanks to strong civil society and a relatively free media climate.
“Ukraine is very much a different country than it was two or four years ago,” he said. “A lot was done in terms of legislation. They have to focus on implementation. The anti-corruption institutions are some of the most advanced on the planet. It cannot be done overnight, considering the starting point … There is the refrain: moving by evolution or revolution. Here, evolution is the only way. It will take time. It’s a process.”
His future
La Cecilia came to Ukraine in the sumer of 2016 and is likely to stay another year. His foreign postings have kept him out of Italy for nearly 30 years. Soon, he will be a dean of the G7 ambassadors to Ukraine, as the ambassadors from the United States, United Kingdom, France, Japan and Canada have either recently departed or are slated to do so by 2020. Germany’s Ernst Reichel also arrived about the same time as La Cecilia did, in August 2016.
The G7 group tries to meet every other week, gatherings with “a very nice group of colleagues” who have helped him understand Ukraine more quickly and completely than he would otherwise have done so, he said.
