Two days to change the West’s posture on the war. Two days in which Italy puts itself at the centre of the table, between Kiev and Brussels, between the future of Ukraine and Euro-Atlantic cohesion. With a watchword: reconstruction. And one name above all, that of the Undersecretary to the Presidency of the Council, Giovanbattista Fazzolari, who on the day of the Patriarch and on the eve of the summit at EUR launches a clear message: “We are all aiming at the freedom of Kiev” (Il Messaggero, 9 July 2025).
Italian protagonism and Fazzolari’s direction
It is not just a conference. It is the largest international summit hosted in Italy since the G20 in Rome in 2021. Fifteen heads of state parade at the Nuvola dell’Eur, led by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, welcomed by President Mattarella and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. But the political director, on the internal level, is Fazzolari: the president’s right-hand man, man-machine of Fratelli d’Italia strategies and reference point of the most coherent component of the patriotic area in government.
“If today we defend the government programme, we are all aiming for a free future for Ukraine,” he declares in a decisive passage to Il Messaggero (Bechis, 9 July 2025). Behind the scenes, he leads the orchestra of parallel diplomacy, at a time when Italy – albeit without the bellicose emphasis of other actors – is carving out a leading role for itself in guaranteeing military, political and humanitarian support for Kyiv.
All with Ukraine. Or almost
“Not only the European and Ukrainian leaders, but also the United States”: this is how Fazzolari in Foglio (Canettieri, 9 July 2025) summarises the diplomatic intensity in Rome. And he underlines the symbolic weight of the meeting the day before at Palazzo Chigi between Giorgia Meloni and the bishops of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church – an identity and moral signal preceding the geopolitical summit proper. The meeting was made official by the government in a note: ‘Convinced support for the cause of Ukraine’s freedom and the protection of the religious and cultural identity of its people’ Palazzo Chigi, 8 July 2025.
The message is clear: reconstruction is not just a matter of contracts or town planning (although the numbers are impressive: an estimated USD 524 billion for recovery, 84 for construction, 13 for reclamation, according to Il Messaggero, p. 2), but is also an anthropological, cultural, strategic challenge.
Trump’s turn on Putin
But changing the tone of the conference – and raising the stakes – is an apparently external event: the sudden words of Donald J. Trump. The former president, now back in the White House, used unusually harsh tones against Vladimir Putin, calling him ‘a smart guy with gangster ways’, as reported by Il Messaggero. A rhetoric that surprised many allies and forced all European governments to reposition themselves, at least on the verbal level.
Fazzolari, for his part, does not give his opinion on the US scenario, but reiterates a principle: ‘A window has opened for Europe and the United States to close ranks behind the Ukrainian cause’. The subtext is clear: Washington’s new line could strengthen transatlantic unity, provided it is followed by strategic coherence and a concrete commitment on the reconstruction ground.
The ambiguities of the home front
If the government appears to be united (Meloni and Tajani in the front line, Crosetto attentive on the military dossier), there is no shortage of distingues in the majority. Matteo Salvini, deputy prime minister and leader of the League, will not attend the summit – replaced by Deputy Minister Rixi – and is silent on Trump’s sentences. An eloquent silence, in a phase in which the Lega area is crossed by opposing pushes: between those who look to Orban and those who do not want to isolate themselves on the Euro-Atlantic level.
No less significant is the abstention of part of the opposition (M5S and the left) on the pro-Kyiv motions, voted instead by the centre-right and Italia Viva. It is a test of maturity for political Italy, which finally seems to have emerged from the season of ambiguous ‘neither with Putin nor with NATO’.
A new patriotic doctrine?
Fazzolari tells how the Meloni government has the merit of having brought the patriotic agenda onto strategic ground: defence, sovereignty, reconstruction. It has been able to decline the Italian identity in an international key without giving in to the ‘middle country’ complex. The Rome conference, read in this key, is not just a showcase, but a test bench: for Ukraine, certainly. But also for Italy and for a right wing that wants to govern with vision and coherence.
