Italy's defence minister tells the BBC that Trump is 'completely wrong' on Ukraine

Italy's defence minister, Guido Crosetto, has told the BBC that the United States is "completely wrong" to restrict its support for Ukraine, saying the approach risks prolonging Russia's full-scale invasion rather than helping to end it. The interview, published by the BBC on Friday, places a serving member of the Italian government in open disagreement with Washington over the war's conduct.

The BBC reported Crosetto's remarks directly, framing them as a warning that reduced American backing would not shorten the conflict. The broadcaster did not, in its headline account, set out the full terms of the minister's argument, and La Veduta has not seen the interview transcript; the substance reported is the minister's judgement that the policy is mistaken and counterproductive.

The intervention is notable because it comes from a defence minister rather than a foreign ministry, and from a government that has consistently positioned itself inside the Western alliance. It is a disagreement about means, as the BBC reports it, not about whether Ukraine should be supported.

The BBC account does not specify which American decisions Crosetto was responding to, nor does it quote him at length. What it reports is the direction of his criticism: that restricting support does not serve the stated aim of ending the war, and that it risks the opposite. Readers should treat the finer points of his reasoning as reported by the BBC rather than as established fact.

For Italy, the remark sits within a long-standing pattern in which Rome's governing parties have argued over how far to align with Washington while remaining formally committed to NATO. La Veduta cannot, from the foreign wire alone, say how the government as a whole has received the minister's words, whether they were coordinated, or whether they drew any response from the US administration. The BBC's report is the record available.

The Marche has no direct stake in the substance of the disagreement, and this bureau will not manufacture one. The region's connection to the story is the general one that defence spending and alliance politics touch every Italian taxpayer and every firm in the mechanical and shipbuilding supply chains that serve the armed forces. That is a national matter, reported here as the foreign press has it.

What comes next depends on whether other European defence ministers echo the position. The BBC's report stands alone in today's wire; no other foreign outlet in the block carries a reaction. Until they do, the story is a single interview and a single attributed criticism, and it should be read as that.