Italy warns against sending NATO troops to Ukraine, advocates diplomacy

Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto has said that sending Western troops to Ukraine would lead to escalation that would make diplomatic ways of settlement impossible.

"Bringing [NATO] troops to Kiev would mean a step toward escalation in one direction, which would close the path to diplomacy," TASS quotes him as saying in an interview with La Stampa newspaper.

The minister noted that NATO has stayed out of the conflict in Ukraine since the beginning of the conflict, and that France and Poland, which allow Western troops to be sent in, can speak for themselves but not speak for the entire alliance.

Crosetto believes that supplying Kyiv with weapons is the right thing to do. But at the same time, he suggested that assistance to Kyiv could be different - through intensified diplomacy.