ROME (AP) — Two armed Turkish men were arrested in the central Italian city of Viterbo, near Rome, hours before a popular local festival, Italy’s Premier Giorgia Meloni said Thursday.
Meloni praised police and Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi for their “swift intervention” leading to the arrests on Wednesday night, which she said “allowed for the safe celebration of a unique event.”
Italian media reported that the two men were suspected of preparing an attack during Wednesday’s celebration, which was attended by Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani. Police in Viterbo were not immediately available to comment on the arrests.
Thousands of people attend Viterbo’s Macchina di Santa Rosa festival, a religious procession and celebration held every year on Sept. 3 to honor the city’s patron saint, Santa Rosa. The main event involves 100 “Facchini di Santa Rosa,” porters carrying a towering, illuminated structure called the “Macchina,” which weighs nearly 5 tons, through the city’s narrow medieval streets.
In recent months, Turkish authorities have conducted major operations against Turkish crime groups operating abroad in cooperation with European police.
In April, coordinated raids in Turkey and several European countries led to 234 arrests for drug trafficking and money laundering, and the seizure of over 21 tons of drugs.
In May 2024, a joint task force of Italian law enforcement and Interpol forces raided a flat in the Viterbo hamlet of Bagnaia and arrested the alleged Turkish mafia boss Bariş Boyun, one of Ankara’s most wanted men.
When Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni walks into the Oval Office on Thursday, her transformation will be complete.
Gone is the ghoulish caricature of an extremist monster, sympathetic to Moscow, whose party was descended from fascists, and in her place stands a pragmatic conservative willing to do business with a grateful international mainstream.
For U.S. President Joe Biden and Ukraine’s backers in the West, securing Meloni’s long-term commitment to the war effort is vital: Italy will assume the leadership of the G7 next year, at what’s likely to be a critical time in the conflict.
Initially, the signs weren’t good. Before she was elected last September, Meloni alarmed officials in Western capitals with her blunt brand of far-right populism. She banged the drum for nationalist causes, vowing to slam the brakes on immigration, stand up to the European Union’s leadership in Brussels and even opposed sanctioning Russia over Ukraine.
Yet 10 months since Meloni won power, the picture has changed dramatically. She will receive VIP treatment at the White House Thursday, with a welcome from Biden that will be as sincere as for any other G7 ally. While the Democrat and the far-right populist share almost nothing in their political outlooks, their handshake is likely to be one of mutual relief.
Meloni’s Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, leader of the center-right Forza Italia party, told POLITICO that the Ukraine war had bolstered Italy’s relationship with the U.S. The Meloni government’s “three polar stars” are now the EU, the U.N. and NATO, he said.
“Italy is part of the Western alliance and wants to be a protagonist in the Western alliance and in particular in its alliance with the U.S.A.,” Tajani said. “Since the crisis in Ukraine, our relationship on issues of security and shared policy with the U.S.A. has been getting stronger.”
Putin’s pals
It is a far cry from the sort of rhetoric that had, until recently, emanated from Rome.
As leader of the hard right Brothers of Italy, she supported Putin’s strongman politics while in opposition, congratulating him after his re-election by saying “the will of the people appears unequivocal.”
After Moscow’s 2014 invasion of Crimea she repeatedly opposed sanctions against Russia, citing the need to protect Italian exports. During the pandemic Meloni endorsed Russia’s Sputnik vaccines. In a TV interview in 2022 before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, she highlighted how essential it was to remain on good terms with Putin and accused Biden of “using foreign policy to cover up the problems he has at home.”
If Meloni seemed like a problem to Western leaders, her coalition partners were an even worse prospect. Matteo Salvini, leader of the right wing League, who once wore a T-shirt printed with Putin’s face to the EU Parliament, attempted to arrange a peace mission to Moscow with flights paid by the Russian embassy.
And Meloni’s coalition partner Silvio Berlusconi, who led the center-right Forza Italia party until his death in June, blamed Ukraine for the war and had a personal friendship with Vladimir Putin, continuing to exchange gifts with the Russian leader even after the invasion.
When she took power, there were deep, if private, fears within the White House, according to several Biden administration officials who were granted anonymity to speak candidly, that Meloni might shatter the G7 support for Ukraine.
But Meloni surprised U.S. officials at the G7 summit in Hiroshima in May with just how eager she seemed to build a strong relationship with Biden, according to two government officials who witnessed their interactions.
At the NATO summit earlier this month in Vilnius, Meloni stood just a few feet from both Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy when the G7 nations announced additional security guarantees for Kyiv that were meant as something of a make-good after NATO declined to fast-track Ukraine’s membership.
At the NATO summit earlier this month in Vilnius, Meloni stood just a few feet from both Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy | Odd Andersen/AFP via Getty Images
With Italy set to take over the presidency of the G7 in January, Meloni’s support for the cause has prompted sighs of relief from both sides of the Atlantic.
“The President and the Prime Minister have built a good, productive relationship as they have worked together closely on a variety of issues such as our support for Ukraine and our approach to China, and President Biden is looking forward to continuing that conversation,” said Adrienne Watson, a spokesperson for Biden’s national security council.
Pleasantly surprised
Biden has told those around him he has been pleasantly surprised by Meloni’s leadership in the war effort but is eager to get to know the Italian leader better, according to multiple administration officials.
For Alessandro Politi, Director of the NATO Defense College Foundation in Rome, Meloni “understood very quickly that when you get into government you have responsibilities and the U.S.A. is a primary ally.”
Her visit to Kyiv in February was a clear sign she was following “an orthodox path” and a moment when “she convinced the wider international community that she was in charge of the coalition and that her allies had to follow her political line.”
Meloni’s support for the Western stance does not mean the whole of Italy feels the same way.
Some populists on both the left and right of Italian politics still hold pro-Russian views, and the question of whether it’s right to send arms to Ukraine elicits fierce debate in the media. Italy’s longstanding position on Russia has always been to try to act as a bridge, facilitating good relations between East and West.
But although a majority of Italians are opposed to it, Meloni has continued to back Ukraine with military aid. Ukrainians are “defending freedom and democracy on which our civilization is based,” she told the Italian Senate in March.
While Biden and Meloni are likely to agree on Ukraine, it is not certain that they will be in harmony on all issues.
In 2019 Italy became the only G7 country to join China’s Belt and Road global infrastructure initiative. Later this year it is up for renewal, but in the new cold war climate the U.S. expects the deal to be scrapped.
While Meloni has indicated that she might not extend the agreement with Beijing, calling it “a big mistake,” this position is not yet confirmed. If she does return to the more traditional Italian line of walking a middle ground, the cracks in the Biden-Meloni relationship will open up again.
MUNICH — China is trying to drive a fresh wedge between Europe and the United States as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine trudges past its one-year mark.
Such was the motif of China’s newly promoted foreign policy chief Wang Yi when he broke the news at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday that President Xi Jinping would soon present a “peace proposal” to resolve what Beijing calls a conflict — not a war — between Moscow and Kyiv. And he pointedly urged his European audience to get on board and shun the Americans.
In a major speech, Wang appealed specifically to the European leaders gathered in the room.
“We need to think calmly, especially our friends in Europe, about what efforts should be made to stop the warfare; what framework should there be to bring lasting peace to Europe; what role should Europe play to manifest its strategic autonomy,” said Wang, who will continue his Europe tour with a stop in Moscow.
In contrast, Wang launched a vociferous attack on “weak” Washington’s “near-hysterical” reaction to Chinese balloons over U.S. airspace, portraying the country as warmongering.
“Some forces might not want to see peace talks to materialize,” he said, widely interpreted as a reference to the U.S. “They don’t care about the life and death of Ukrainians, [nor] the harms on Europe. They might have strategic goals larger than Ukraine itself. This warfare must not continue.”
Yet at the conference, Europe showed no signs of distancing itself from the U.S. nor pulling back on military support for Ukraine. The once-hesitant German Chancellor Olaf Scholz urged Europe to give Ukraine even more modern tanks. And French President Emmanuel Macron shot down the idea of immediate peace talks with the Kremlin.
And, predictably, there was widespread skepticism that China’s idea of “peace” will match that of Europe.
“China has not been able to condemn the invasion,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told a group of reporters. Beijing’s peace plan, he added, “is quite vague.” Peace, the NATO chief emphasized, is only possible if Russia respects Ukraine’s sovereignty.
Europe watches with caution
Wang’s overtures illustrate the delicate dance China has been trying to pull off since the war began.
Keen to ensure Russia is not weakened in the long run, Beijing has offered Vladimir Putin much-needed diplomatic support, while steering clear of any direct military assistance that would attract Western sanctions against its economic and trade relations with the world.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitro Kuleba is expected to hold a bilateral meeting with Wang while in Munich | Johannes Simon/Getty Images
“We will put forward China’s position on the political settlement on the Ukraine crisis, and stay firm on the side of peace and dialogue,” Wang said. “We do not add fuel to the fire, and we are against reaping benefit from this crisis.”
According to Italy’s Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, who met Wang earlier this week, Xi will make his “peace proposal” on the first anniversary of the war, which is Friday.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitro Kuleba is expected to hold a bilateral meeting with Wang while in Munich. He said he hoped to have a “frank” conversation with the Beijing envoy.
“We believe that compliance with the principle of territorial integrity is China’s fundamental interest in the international arena,” Kuleba told journalists in Munich. “And that commitment to the observance and protection of this principle is a driving force for China, greater than other arguments offered by Ukraine, the United States, or any other country.”
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell met Wang later on Saturday and called on him to “use [China’s] closeness to convince Russia to engage in real peace efforts. Borrell expressed hope that Wang’s visit to Moscow could be used to convince Russia to stop its brutal war,” according to an EU official familiar with the talks, adding the EU chief told Wang Russia conducted “gross violation of the letter and spirit of the U.N. Charter.”
Many in Munich were wary of the upcoming Chinese plan.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock welcomed China’s effort to use its influence to foster peace but told reporters she had “talked intensively” with Wang during a bilateral meeting on Friday about “what a just peace means: not rewarding the attacker, the aggressor, but standing up for international law and for those who have been attacked.”
“A just peace,” she added, “presupposes that the party that has violated territorial integrity — meaning Russia — withdraws its troops from the occupied country.”
One reason for Europe’s concerns is the Chinese peace plan could undermine an effort at the United Nations to rally support for a resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which will be on the U.N.’s General Assembly agenda next week, according to three European officials and diplomats.
Taiwan issue stokes up US-China tension
If China was keen to talk about peace in Ukraine, it’s more reluctant to do so in a case closer to home.
When Wolfgang Ischinger, the veteran German diplomat behind the conference, asked Wang if he could reassure the audience Beijing was not planning an imminent military escalation against Taiwan, the Chinese envoy was non-committal.
Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said “what is happening in Europe today could happen in east Asia tomorrow” | Johannes Simon/Getty Images
“Let me assure the audience that Taiwan is part of Chinese territory. It has never been a country and it will never be a country in the future,” Wang said.
The worry over Taiwan resonated in a speech from NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, who said “what is happening in Europe today could happen in Asia tomorrow.” Reminding the audience of the painful experience of relying on Russia’s energy supply, he said: “We should not make the same mistakes with China and other authoritarian regimes.”
But China’s most forceful attack was reserved for the U.S. Calling its decision to shoot down Chinese and other balloons “absurd” and “near-hysterical,” Wang said: “It does not show the U.S. is strong; on the contrary, it shows it is weak.
Wang also amplified the message in other bilateral meetings, including one with Pakistani Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari. “U.S. bias and ignorance against China has reached a ridiculous level,” he said. “The U.S. … has to stop this kind of absurd nonsense out of domestic political needs.”
It remains unclear if Wang will hold a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken while in Germany, as has been discussed.
Hans von der Burchard and Lili Bayer reported from Munich, and Stuart Lau reported from Brussels.
This article was updated to include details of the meeting between Wang and Borrell.
CORRECTION: Jens Stoltenberg’s reference to Asia has been updated.
