Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi said on Sunday that the diplomatic efforts by the West to persuade Russian President Vladimir Putin to halt the war in Ukraine had so far achieved nothing.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi has said that talks with Putin haven’t been effective so far. Photo by Remo Casilli / POOL / AFP. “I am beginning to think that those people are right when they say ‘It is useless to talk to him, it’s just a waste of time’,” Draghi told Italian newspaper Il Corriere della Sera. Draghi said he had always felt French President Emmanuel Macron, who currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency, “is right to try every possible avenue of dialogue. “But I have the impression that the horror of the war with its carnage, with what they have done to children and women, is completely independent of the words and phone calls that are made,” the Italian leader said. So far, Putin’s goal had not been the search for peace, “but the attempt to annihilate the Ukrainian resistance, occupy the country and entrust it to a friendly government,” Draghi continued. Draghi spoke with Putin in recent days about achieving peace. “I asked him: ‘When are you meeting (Ukraine president) Zelensky? Only you two can untie the knots’. He replied: ‘The time is not now’. I insisted: ‘Decide on a ceasefire’. Again, ‘No: the time is not now’.” Like many others at the beginning of the conflict, Draghi had thought a quick victory for the Russians was likely.
