Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio presented to United Nations (UN) Secretary-General António Guterres a peace plan to end the war between Russia and Ukraine.

The news was reported by the Italian newspaper La Repubblica and confirmed by Foreign Ministry sources.

Presented last Wednesday (18), in New York, the project envisions a four-phase course under the auspices of an “international facilitation group”: a ceasefire, possible Ukrainian neutrality, territorial issues (Crimea and Donbass), and a new European security agreement.

The parties’ commitment to their commitment will be evaluated at each stage of the plan before moving on to the next. The first phase, the ceasefire, will be accompanied by the demilitarization of the fronts to allow the negotiations to progress.

The second step will revolve around multilateral negotiations on the future international status of Ukraine, which has given up on joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) but wants to join the European Union.

The third – and most sensitive – phase concerns the fate of Crimea, a peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014, and Donbass, which includes the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. Moscow defends the sovereignty of these regions, but Ukraine does not give up its territorial integrity.

The plan will result in a new multilateral agreement on peace and security in Europe.

To make pressure

In his speech to the Senate on Thursday (19), Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi did not mention Di Maio’s plan presented at the UN, but stressed the importance of “a ceasefire and resumption of negotiations as soon as possible”. .

“Italy will act with its European partners and allies for any possibility of mediation, but Ukraine will decide which peace to accept. A peace without Ukraine is unacceptable,” he said.

Draghi is under pressure from part of his parliamentary base not to send any more weapons to Ukraine – Italy has sent two shipments of military equipment to Kiev since the start of the war – and to focus on peace talks.

This crackdown is led by former Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and Senator and former Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, leaders of the anti-system 5 Star Movement (M5S) and the ultranationalist League, respectively.

“Some are talking about sending more weapons in this plenary, I disagree,” Salvini said in a speech in the Senate on Thursday. “When it comes to arms shipments, our position is known: we have already shipped it,” Conte told ANSA.