Brussels – Threats against schools have brought hybrid warfare into Italian homes. So says Lucia Annunziata, Member of the European Parliament for the Democratic Party in the S&D group, who notes that what is most dear to us is being targeted: our children and the places where they are educated. A bomb in a place of learning, she notes, is the ultimate desecration. And the war that once seemed distant has now, she says, “taken the seat next to us in the classroom.”
According to Annunziata, these threats have changed the atmosphere in the country: terrified young people, distraught parents, a government that is finally showing concern, and an opposition caught off guard. Against this backdrop, the word ‘defence’ – which had remained on the fringes of the debate between peace and war – takes centre stage, not to fuel conflicts but to prevent them.
The MEP points out how war has changed: “It is blind, unpredictable and subtle, with no trenches; it does not spare civilians but uses them. It comes from the sky via satellites and missiles, and from the sea via underwater drones capable of disrupting data transmission”. According to the MEP, Italy and other European countries “do not have the means to oppose” this modern form of warfare.
Western Europe, Annunziata concludes, “has reached this stage convinced that it can survive anything, but today it must come to terms with its own weaknesses”.
English version by the Translation Service of Withub
