There is a side to Italy that is neither hostile nor indifferent towards Ukraine. These are its faces

‘In 21st-century Europe, there can’t be another war; it’s unthinkable that one country could simply attack another as if it were nothing. Right? It’s impossible. Those days are gone; we don’t do things like that anymore,’ writes Artem Chapeye, a writer and now a Ukrainian soldier, in his wonderful book "Normal People Don’t Go Around Armed: Thoughts on Pacifism When Your Country Is Invaded". It cannot be. ‘How is this possible?’ I asked myself on 8 August 2008, sitting in a café with friends in Tbilisi, when we saw on the television the long column of tanks crossing the Georgian border and launching the Russian invasion.

It wasn’t astonishment that struck me that evening. It came as no surprise that it was the Russians who were doing it. Rather, it was the West’s powerlessness that left me breathless – the dysfunctionality of a global order we believed to be solid, founded on norms and rules that countries had established in the aftermath of the Second World War. How is this possible, I wondered. It was a question destined never to leave me, and one I would rephrase with even greater anguish on 24 February 2022, when Russia launched a large-scale invasion of Ukraine before the eyes of a West that once again found itself unprepared (not least because of its own misguided policies towards Moscow) whilst yet another massacre unfolded.

When I returned to Italy in August 2008, the phrase that greeted me was: “Have you gone mad? Why did you provoke Russia? How on earth did you let yourselves be invaded?”. Years followed in which warnings about European security – not just regarding Georgia, but across the whole of Eastern Europe – were dismissed as the paranoia of former victims of a former empire, or as the personal torment of ‘those from the East’. In 2014, Russia annexed Crimea and sparked the war in the Donbas – confirmation, if any were still needed, that those warnings were well-founded. But in Italy, as in much of Europe, what was happening in those parts remained stubbornly ‘a personal problem of the “post-Soviet” nations’.

Even after 2022, following the massacres and atrocities against civilians with which Russia continued its invasion of Ukraine, Italy has remained a country that has never quite managed to sympathise fully with those under attack. In opinion polls, support for Ukraine – and for sending the weapons needed to defend itself – has consistently remained lower than in the rest of Europe. In almost five years, there has never been a truly well-attended demonstration of solidarity with Ukraine. The few that are held in various Italian cities are attended mainly by the Ukrainian community itself, and there are so few Italians present that, at the ones in Piazza Esquilino in Rome, I can almost greet them one by one.

A few days ago, I attended a meeting in the Senate, organised by MP Lia Quartapelle and Senator Filippo Sensi, with representatives from various Italian voluntary and civil society groups who have been committed to supporting Ukraine for years – people who continue to travel to a country at war, often risking their lives. The aim was to collect their stories in order to convey, at least in part, to the Ukrainian community the assurance that there is another side to Italy—one that works every day to assist a people under attack and to show them solidarity. There are many of them, and this meeting in the Senate is just a tiny example of a much greater commitment, for which we should all be grateful – to the Italian volunteers and to the many organisations that, since 2022, have been carrying out an extraordinary act of humanity.

“Varia is two months old and was born in Kramatorsk, a city entirely covered by anti-drone nets, where explosions can be heard at any moment. We wear bulletproof vests and helmets; Varia’s mother, on the other hand, is wearing a polka-dot T-shirt and a pair of ballet flats”, says Patrizia De Grazia of Radicali Italiani, for whom this is “surreal normality” to which the family – evacuated along with their grandmother and brothers – has been forced to adapt, whilst tens of thousands remain in Kramatorsk, living and dying under fire every day.

Sarah Brizzolara, a MEAN volunteer, speaks of a “shattered normality of life struggling to survive underground” in Kharkiv, where entire communities are living in shelters whilst lost generations – her peers – lie in cemeteries. She recalls the image of a woman she met on the Kyiv metro during a drone attack, who burst into tears because their presence gave her hope: “That’s when you realise that peace is born of connections, of a glance, of a ‘we are here’.”

Andrea Alesiani of Liberi e Oltre points out that the fabric of the Ukrainian resistance also comprises volunteers who supply the brigades at the front, run humanitarian kitchens and evacuate civilians, knowing that any vehicle bearing the word ‘evacuation’ can become a target: This happened to Slava Ilchenko, who was killed at Christmas, and to the Polish volunteer Marek Rusek-Wolski, who was killed in Kharkiv a month ago. Most of them receive no salary: for this reason, says Alesiani, Italy can provide vehicles, equipment and training to enable them to continue saving lives without losing their own.

Adriano Stabile, a MEAN activist, describes Odessa “as a daughter abused every night by those who believe themselves to be her masters, but who refuses to give them the satisfaction of seeing her cry and wakes up every morning with a smile – the strongest form of resistance”. After being involved in an incident caused by a drone attack, he realised – whilst sitting on a bus bound for Moldova with a broken jaw – that he did not want to view his Italian passport merely as a privilege, but as a responsibility. Hence his appeal for Europe to strengthen its military industrial capacity and transform the protection of civilians “into a permanent commitment rather than a matter for emergency negotiations”.

Donata Monti, an activist with Base, returned to Odessa in 2026 to ‘understand’, following an initial trip to Kyiv and Kharkiv during which she had wept everywhere she went. At a centre for the homeless, she distributed food and chopped wood for the winter; at half past six in the morning, while the drone alert was still in force, she found people already preparing breakfast for her. She concludes: “Those who criticise, those who no longer wish to provide aid, those who speak without knowing, without wanting to see or understand – they should simply be ashamed.”

Lucio Turra, of Azione Cattolica Nazionale, recounts a journey marked by concrete acts of kindness – a lunch prepared for the fire brigade, a meeting with veterans, and a visit to a school. What struck him most, however, were not the sleepless nights caused by drones, but rather the separation of Ukrainian families who, before the war, were able to see one another freely but can no longer do so… and the thought of the approximately five million Ukrainian children who are currently unable to go to school.

Listening to their accounts, one is reminded that while it may be impossible to single-handedly reform a global order struggling to protect those under attack, individuals can nonetheless choose, each day, not to be indifferent. The volunteers I met at the Senate embody this principle, as do other Italian organisations that have, for years, continued to cross a dangerous border to deliver food, medicine, a listening ear and a supportive presence. It is to them that we owe the certainty that another Italy exists and that, despite everything, it continues to choose to be there.