“It’s about our democracy, it’s about influencing our public opinion, it’s about what happens in Africa, it’s about raw materials, it’s about the instrumentalization of migration. We need to know it’s a very wide idea of security,” Meloni was quoted as saying by Reuters.

Russia and Belarus have been orchestrating an influx of migrants since 2021, letting thousands of asylum seekers to the European Union’s eastern borders with a pledge of safe entry into the EU.

In November 2021, Belarusian troops escorted thousands of asylum seekers to the Polish border, cutting through the wire fence to allow refugees to cross. Most of them were violently pushed back by Polish border guards who set up a no-access zone at the border for nine months.

Italy’s right-wing prime minister urged the EU to view migration as a distributive problem as well as a security one.

“Security also means critical infrastructure, it means artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, raw materials, supply chains. It means a new and more effective foreign and cooperation policy, it means migration,” Meloni added.

Meloni cautioned against complacency in the EU, adding that even after Russia’s war in Ukraine ends, its security challenge will not go away.

“We have to understand the threat is much wider than we imagine.”

Tensions between Europe and Moscow have surged after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The EU imposed 15 packages of sanctions against Russia, and most of its members provided military support to Kyiv.

Trump has repeatedly pledged to end the Ukraine conflict within a day of taking office, but has yet to elaborate on how he plans to achieve this. His vows have raised concerns in Kiev that it may be facing not only a decline in aid but also an audit of the billions of dollars it has received from the White House under President Joe Biden.

“You look at some of these cities and there is not a single building in good condition left. So, when you say “restore the country”, restore what? This is a 110-year reconstruction,” the Spanish daily cited Trump as saying in a “message” to Zelensky from his Florida golf club this week.

Earlier this month, Trump called on both Ukraine and Russia to reach an immediate ceasefire. He posted the call on his social media platform Truth Social after meeting in Paris with Zelensky and President Emmanuel Macron.

The Wall Street Journal reported in early December, citing officials, that Trump had said Western Europe should deploy its troops to Ukraine to monitor a potential ceasefire.

He reportedly added that the EU should play the main role in defending and supporting Kiev, while Washington could support the effort without sending troops.

Speaking at his end-of-year press conference on Thursday, Russian president Vladimir Putin reiterated that Moscow remains open to negotiating with Kiev without any preconditions, except those that had already been agreed upon in Istanbul in 2022, which envisaged a neutral, non-aligned status for Ukraine, as well as certain restrictions on deploying foreign weaponry. He also noted that such talks would have to respect the realities on the ground that have developed since that time.