Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's first visit to Ukraine.
The journey of the Prime Minister through the story of the ANSA correspondent,
Silvia Gasparetto.
See with your own eyes.
Closed in a coat perhaps a little too light for the cold and the light but insistent rain that accompany her first visit, comfortable amphibians on her feet, Giorgia Meloni arrives in Kiev intent on understanding "what is really needed" by a people who are fighting " to defend his freedom".
The premier gets off the train at eleven in the morning, a couple of hours late on the roadmap that will lead her to forced stages first to "see" what is left of the horrors of Bucha, who has now proudly already begun his reconstruction, and then the effects of the bombing of Irpin.
It was the beginning of the war, when Vladimir Putin thought "it would last a few days" but underestimated "the resistance of the Ukrainian people",
says Meloni in one of the public moments of a lightning visit that arrives the day after the historic embrace between Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelensky.
The premier is late in arriving in Kiev precisely because of the crossing with the American convoy: at Rzeszow airport, the Italian delegation waits more than an hour for the green light to take off;
first the US president, returning from Kiev, must leave for Warsaw.
The two feel alone on the phone while Meloni heads towards the Ukrainian capital.
He gets on the train at one o'clock in the morning, the journey runs smoothly but it's long, and also includes two stops for passport controls, at the border and in Lviv.
Then off, through the Ukrainian countryside, a few sprays of snow from the windows, a gray sky that welcomes her to Kiev.
the day after the historic embrace between Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelensky.
The premier is late in arriving in Kiev precisely because of the crossing with the American convoy: at Rzeszow airport, the Italian delegation waits more than an hour for the green light to take off;
first the US president, returning from Kiev, must leave for Warsaw.
The two feel alone on the phone while Meloni heads towards the Ukrainian capital.
He gets on the train at one o'clock in the morning, the journey runs smoothly but it's long, and also includes two stops for passport controls, at the border and in Lviv.
Then off, through the Ukrainian countryside, a few sprays of snow from the windows, a gray sky that welcomes her to Kiev.
the day after the historic embrace between Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelensky.
The premier is late in arriving in Kiev precisely because of the crossing with the American convoy: at Rzeszow airport, the Italian delegation waits more than an hour for the green light to take off;
first the US president, returning from Kiev, must leave for Warsaw.
The two feel alone on the phone while Meloni heads towards the Ukrainian capital.
He gets on the train at one o'clock in the morning, the journey runs smoothly but it's long, and also includes two stops for passport controls, at the border and in Lviv.
Then off, through the Ukrainian countryside, a few sprays of snow from the windows, a gray sky that welcomes her to Kiev.
Rzeszow airport the Italian delegation waits more than an hour for the go-ahead for take-off;
first the US president, returning from Kiev, must leave for Warsaw.
The two feel alone on the phone while Meloni heads towards the Ukrainian capital.
He gets on the train at one o'clock in the morning, the journey runs smoothly but it's long, and also includes two stops for passport controls, at the border and in Lviv.
Then off, through the Ukrainian countryside, a few sprays of snow from the windows, a gray sky that welcomes her to Kiev.
Rzeszow airport the Italian delegation waits more than an hour for the go-ahead for take-off;
first the US president, returning from Kiev, must leave for Warsaw.
The two feel alone on the phone while Meloni heads towards the Ukrainian capital.
He gets on the train at one o'clock in the morning, the journey runs smoothly but it's long, and also includes two stops for passport controls, at the border and in Lviv.
Then off, through the Ukrainian countryside, a few sprays of snow from the windows, a gray sky that welcomes her to Kiev.
the journey goes smoothly but is long, and also includes two stops for passport controls, at the border and in Lviv.
Then off, through the Ukrainian countryside, a few sprays of snow from the windows, a gray sky that welcomes her to Kiev.
the journey goes smoothly but is long, and also includes two stops for passport controls, at the border and in Lviv.
Then off, through the Ukrainian countryside, a few sprays of snow from the windows, a gray sky that welcomes her to Kiev.
The podcast
: Giorgia Meloni is moved in Bucha, you are not alone
"I am honored, it was only right to be here", the first words of the premier to the small crowd of cameras that awaits her, including the many freelancers who have been coming and going from Ukraine since the beginning of the conflict to tell the devastating effects of the Russian invasion.
A story that the prime minister hears from the speakerphone of the mayor of Bucha, who she listens carefully as she walks in the mud that covered, a year ago, the 419 victims found in the mass graves of the town on the outskirts of the capital.
She asks if they were "very young".
The city "had resisted in an unexpected way right?", she asks almost incredulously, hugging her coat.
And she holds in her hands the medal of spent bullets that the local authorities give her as a gift: "City not conquered", she reads aloud on the back,
after depositing a wreath on the mass grave memorial and before browsing a small photographic exhibition with images of the massacres.
Moved by the living testimony of the horror, her premier asks for a message to be translated to her Ukrainian interlocutors: "You are not alone".
The same one she will also take to Irpin, where she makes a quick pass to deliver two generators, part of the civilian aid Italy has been sending since the beginning of the war.
"It's different to talk about numbers or to see people's lives destroyed for no reason. We've seen flowers and soft toys: it's different, it's worth seeing".
And by signing the flag of the suburb of the capital, Meloni writes it clearly: "At your side!".
The podcast
: Giorgia Meloni is on her way to Kiev