A Senate spokesman said in statements this provision must now pass to the Chamber of Deputies, where it also needs to have to be endorsed by majority for it to become law.

Among the opposition forces, just the 5 Star Movement (M5S) strongly opposed the new decree (23 senators refused).

Ettore Licheri, Italian politician, M5S leader, and member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defense, said that “it is not true that we are all in favor of peace in this Chamber”, in order to put an end to the Ukraine conflict.

“Whoever is in favor of peace cannot take sides against any military escalation, and whoever is in favor of a continuous weapon supply cannot, for consistency, say that they are in favor of peace,” Licheri stated.

Past Saturday, the U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan talked by phone with Francesco Taló, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni´s assistant, to press for the resumption of sending weapons to Ukraine, according to La Repubblica.

One of Washington’s present goals is to speed up parliamentary approval of new military shipments to Kyiv from Rome, and the inclusion of Samp-T medium-range surface-to-air anti-missile systems, capable of destroying air vehicles at 100 km away.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova recently stated her government ruled out the chance that Italy could be guarantor of an eventual Kyiv-Moscow peace agreement, as proposed by Meloni at the end of December 2022.

pll/ro/ort