Italy rages as Macron warned he’s about to plunge Europe in WW3 with Putin

Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini accused French President Macron of increasing tensions with Russia by repeatedly raising the option of sending Western troops to help Ukraine.

On Tuesday, Salvini, a far-right leader of the Lega party, posted a picture of Macron on X, dressed in combat gear and holding an assault rifle.

He captioned the picture: “A military escalation and Italian soldiers on the front line on the orders of the dangerous ‘bombers’? No thanks.”

Salvini also posted an image of himself at an election rally, with a rosary in hand, along with another picture of Macron as a European Union soldier.

He wrote: “Yes to Italy’s commitment to peace, to the Constitution’s rejection of war, inspired by our collective moral conscience and our Christian tradition.”

This is not the first time the outspoken Italian Deputy Prime Minister has lashed out at Macron.

On Monday, Salvini called the French President “crazy” and even advised him to “seek treatment” earlier in May for his suggestion that Western nations should send troops to fight in Ukraine.

“This is what I will say to Macron: go to Ukraine yourself and fight! Put on your helmet and stop making fun of the Italians”, Salvini reportedly said recently at an election conference in Bari.

Salvini also recently declared to foreign press: “We will never allow the sending of a single Italian or European soldier to fight and die in Ukraine and we will never allow, we will never give consent as a league, to the use of the weapons we sent to Kyiv to defend itself, to attack in Russia.”

Salvini’s political party signed an agreement with Vladimir Putin’s own party, United Russia, in 2017.

However, he continued to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which began in February 2022.

Additional reporting by Maria Ortega.