(ANSA) - ROME, FEB 08 - "The Ukrainian crisis is at the center of the Government's European and international agenda. We are working to avoid the worrying risk of a military escalation. It would add to the already serious consequences - in humanitarian, geopolitical and economic terms - of a conflict that has now been open for almost a decade on the borders of Europe, solid two thousand kilometers from Trieste. A conflict that since 2014 has already caused 15 thousand victims among soldiers, fighters and civilians; one and a half million refugees inside Ukraine, and 500 thousand in Russia " .
Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio said this to the joint foreign and defense commissions.
(HANDLE).
