ROME (AFP) – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged Italian lawmakers on Tuesday (March 22) to cease their nation being a playground for Russia’s elite, whereas warning meals shortages sparked by the struggle danger a recent migrant disaster.
Italy’s MPs gave a standing ovation to Mr Zelensky as he delivered the most recent of a sequence of video speeches to Western Parliaments in an effort to drum up assist following Russia’s invasion of his nation on Feb 24.
“Don’t be the place that welcomes these people,” Mr Zelensky instructed lawmakers in Italy, lengthy a prime vacation vacation spot for Russia’s elite, who’re identified to personal luxurious villas in among the nation’s most picturesque locations, from Tuscany to the island of Sardinia.
“We must freeze them all: freeze their properties, their accounts, their yachts, from Scheherazade to the smallest. We must freeze the assets of all those in Russia who have the power to make decisions,” he stated.
The possession of the multimillion-dollar mega yacht Scheherazade, docked on the Tuscan coast, is at the moment the supply of hypothesis that it belongs to a Russian oligarch, and even maybe President Vladimir Putin himself.
Speaking after Mr Zelensky, Prime Minister Mario Draghi stated Rome had to date seized greater than €800 million (S$1.2 billion) value of property belonging to European Union-sanctioned Russian oligarchs, together with a €530-million yacht.
Italy has taken in 60,000 Ukrainians, principally girls and youngsters, who’ve fled their homeland.
Mr Zelensky – whose speeches to Parliaments are rigorously focused on the native viewers – additionally raised the spectre of individuals arriving in Italy from international locations hit by a meals disaster attributable to the struggle.
Historically, Ukraine has been a grain-exporting breadbasket for the world.
It additionally provided many support businesses, with the United Nation’s World Food Programme shopping for practically half of its world wheat provides from Ukraine earlier than the struggle.
“We don’t know when we will have the harvest, and if we can export,” Mr Zelensky stated.
“We can’t export corn, oil, wheat, so many merchandise which can be completely crucial for all times.
“And this also affects your neighbours across the sea. Prices are rising, tens of millions of people will need help off your shores,” he added.
Italy has been on the entrance line of migration into Europe for years, with a whole lot of hundreds of individuals fleeing conflicts or local weather change making an attempt the perilous Mediterranean crossing lately from the coasts of north Africa.
Several of the events in Mr Draghi’s coalition authorities have lengthy nurtured shut ties with the Kremlin, from Mr Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia occasion to Mr Matteo Salvini’s far-right League and the as soon as anti-establishment Five Star Movement.
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