Italian Prime Minister Giorgio Meloni spoke out against French President Emmanuel Macron's proposal to send a European military contingent to Ukraine at an online meeting of the coalition of the willing. Corriere della Sera writes about this.

According to the publication, Meloni stressed that such an initiative is associated with serious risks."Russia has 1.3 million soldiers: how many should we send to accomplish this task? And if one of our soldiers dies, will we pretend that nothing happened, or will we have to respond?" she said. The prime minister added that in such a case, the conflict would automatically involve NATO.

Instead, Meloni proposed an alternative: extending NATO's Article 5 to Ukraine, so that the country would receive security guarantees even without being a member. According to the prime minister, such automatic protection could be a concrete and meaningful outcome of the negotiations for Kyiv.

The idea reportedly attracted interest from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and US leader Donald Trump, but did not find support from Macron. The French leader continues to insist on the direct participation of European states in the military defense of Ukraine.

As Corriere della Sera notes, disagreements between Italy and France also manifested themselves in the question of the possible location of future negotiations with the participation of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Zelensky and Trump: Rome offered to hold the meeting at its place, while Macron insisted on Geneva.

As Bloomberg writes, Western countries are considering air cover as possible guarantees for Ukraine's security. The agency's sources also said that the possibility of providing Ukraine with guarantees similar to Article 5 of the NATO Charter, which obliges the alliance countries to defend each other in the event of an attack on one of the participants, was also discussed. However, as Bloomberg notes, the creation of such a principle for protecting Kyiv will be associated with serious difficulties.