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Italian Giorgia Meloni has criticized Donald Trump’s plan to buy diesel from Russia, calling it a “very risky choice” that undermines international pressure on Vladimir Putin to end his war in Ukraine.
Speaking in parliament on Wednesday on the eve of EU leaders’ summit on support for Ukraine, the Italian prime minister said it was the Israeli-US war in Iran that was driving up global energy prices, not Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries.
The U.S. president blamed kyiv strikes for rising diesel prices and announced Friday that he had reached a deal with Putin to allow Russia to sell 300,000 tons of diesel to the United States and other countries, despite Western sanctions and efforts to bring the Russian president back to the negotiating table, Meloni said.
“The outcome of this decision is questionable, the risks are clear,” she said in her fiercest criticism of a policy championed by her former political ally.
Meloni acknowledged that high energy prices are currently putting great pressure on families and businesses around the world, including in Italy.
But she said Trump’s Russian diesel deal would grant “legitimacy to Moscow while its bombs continue to fall on Ukrainian cities,” bring new revenue to Putin’s war chest and lead to “an implicit weakening of the leverage provided by sanctions.”
“These are factors that we cannot ignore, and they contradict the steps taken so far by Western countries, including the United States, to push Putin to the negotiating table,” she said.
Meloni denounced Russia’s “increasingly harsh attacks” on civilian targets in Ukraine, such as power plants, hospitals and bridges.
“This is a strategy by which Russia aims to subjugate the Ukrainian people through terror, cold and darkness, simply because it failed to subdue them on the battlefield,” she said. “No one will convince me that the capitulation of those who defend their freedom can be called peace. »
Meloni’s attack is his most vocal criticism of the US president since their personal and political alliance broke down earlier this year.
Meloni, who has long ties to the US Republican Party, was once an ardent admirer of Trump. After returning to the White House in 2025, she hoped that their shared ideological leanings would allow her to serve as a bridge between Washington and Europe.
But their once-warm personal bond fractured this year, after Rome hesitated to authorize the use of U.S. air bases in Italy for Trump’s unpopular and controversial bombing campaign in Iran.
Although Meloni avoided any direct criticism of the war, Trump turned on the Italian prime minister, accusing him of lacking the courage to support the war, leading to a bitter public row between them.
Rome and Washington have since sought to repair ties, with Rome saying it would no longer respond to Trump’s personal provocations.
Meloni’s attack comes as his government faces growing difficulties in tackling Europe’s highest energy prices, which industry groups say threaten the country’s economic growth.
Former general Roberto Vannacci, the Italian prime minister’s main political rival, welcomed Trump’s decision to buy Russian diesel.
Riccardo Alcaro, a political risk analyst at the Institute of International Affairs in Rome, said Meloni taking such a strong stance against Trump on the issue would strengthen his position in Europe and highlight his differences with Vannacci, a Putin admirer and former military attaché in Moscow.
“For Meloni, support for Ukraine was the defining issue that earned him an international reputation,” Alcaro said.
“The fact that she came out so strongly against a decision that Vannacci has already praised reinforces her reputation, nationally and internationally, as a politician who remains committed to the Ukrainian line and who is not as willing as one might think to go where the political wind blows,” he said.
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