ATHENS

Not one Italian soldier will ever die in the name of French President Emmanuel Macron, Italy’s right-wing deputy prime minister said Thursday.

"Never one Italian soldier to die in Macron's name, that's what I think," Matteo Salvini said on X.

His remarks came after Macron in an exclusive interview with the British magazine The Economist reiterated that Western ground troops in Ukraine cannot be ruled out if Russian troops break through the front lines and Kyiv makes a formal request for NATO troops.

In response, according to the Italian state-run news agency ANSA, Sandro Gozi, a member of the European Parliament and secretary general of the European Democratic Party, who is also a member of Macron's Renaissance party's Team Europe for upcoming European elections, said “the first immediate response to the French president's words did not come from the official spokesperson of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, but from the real Kremlin spokesman in Europe, Matteo Salvini.”

Posting a famous photo of Salvini in Red Square wearing a t-shirt with Russian President Vladimir Putin's face on it, he added: "No strategic ambiguity: he has chosen what side to be on, that of Putin and Russia obviously.”