ROME, March 7. /TASS/. European Parliament member from the Italian League party Roberto Vannacci warned that provocations discrediting Russia could be staged in Ukraine to convince the Europeans to rearm.
"The plan is already ready, developed and synchronized, we just need to implement it at X hour," he wrote on his Instagram page (banned in Russia; owned by Meta Corporation, recognized as extremist in Russia) in a post titled How We Will Be Convinced to Fight.
Vannacci is a former military man, a general, who participated in numerous NATO missions, including in Afghanistan and Iraq. He forecast two scenarios — there will either be a staged attempt on civilians with victims, or an incident at an energy facility like the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant.
"One of these options, or both, synchronized in time, or something like that could make the Europeans’ hair stand on end, and this would convince them of the irreversible danger. So [European Commission President Ursula] von der Leyen would have trump cards to spend unlimited funds on weapons, and [French President Emmanuel] Macron to send troops to Ukraine," he wrote.
He noted that the French president's proposal to send European troops to Ukraine was "a demonstration of the failure of a loser, his complete incompetence and ignorance." Vannucci stressed that in this way the main principle is violated: any mission must be neutral. "Europe is far from neutral, as it immediately took positions against Russia, rejecting the slightest possibility of negotiations," Vannacci continued.
The general became famous for his acclaimed book The World Upside Down, in which he expounds on issues such as migration, family, homosexuality, and climate change. His judgments have provoked contradictory reactions, criticism, accusations of homophobia, and even censorship in today's post-liberal Europe. Vannacci was the military attache in Moscow from December 2020 to May 2022, when he was expelled with a group of diplomats as part of a mirror response after a mass expulsion of Russian diplomats from Rome. In the last European Parliament elections, he was one of the key candidates from the League, which opposes sending European troops to Ukraine and has a very negative view of von der Leyen's work.
Europe’s militarization
Earlier this week, head of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen proposed to the EU leaders a plan to rearm the union with a budget of 800 billion euros. The EC's proposal implies that the EU countries will borrow up to 150 billion euros for defense. The European Commission will borrow this money from the capital markets, and then lend it to the states on condition that they jointly purchase weapons in Europe. These funds will be used for the production of air defense systems in the EU and weapons for Ukraine. Also, the EC proposed that countries increase defense spending by 1.5% to raise 650 billion euros for the production of weapons.