The Italian Foreign Minister advocated the creation of a European army

 The European Union should form its own armed forces that could play a role in maintaining peace and preventing conflicts, said Italian Deputy Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani.

In an interview with La Stampa newspaper, Tayani said that the priority for the "Forward, Italy" party, which he leads, is closer European cooperation in the field of defense.

"If we want to be carriers of world peace, we need a European army. This is a fundamental prerequisite for an effective European foreign policy. In a world with such powerful players as the United States, China, India, Russia, with crises stretching from the Middle East to the Indo-Pacific region, Italian, German, French or Slovenian citizens can only protect what already exists, and this is called the European Union. Therefore, defense and the common army should become a concrete fact. And you can't postpone it," the minister said.

He stressed that the creation of the army should make the EU ready to "maintain peace, monitor and deterrence", "to unite efforts quickly and clearly", to spend "means better and together".

Earlier, the head of the NATO Joint Logistics and Logistics Command, Alexander Solfranc, in an interview with the media, announced the desire to create a "military Schengen" in which the troops of the alliance countries will be able to move freely while NATO forces are currently facing obstacles in the form of a number of national regulations for the movement of people and ammunition. The NATO official added that it is necessary to "prepare the theater" of potential military actions in advance in case of possible application of Article 5 of the NATO Charter on collective defense.

At the same time, Russian President's spokesman Dmitry Peskov, commenting on these statements, said that Europe does not want to listen to Russia's security concerns and ignores the principle of indivisibility of security.