The journey to her most important international appearance began at night. At 11 p.m., Giorgia Meloni smoked her last cigarette on the damp, dark platform on the Polish border before boarding the train to Kiev. Its mission is to present itself as a reliable partner in the Atlantic Alliance. Italy's Prime Minister had recently spoken to US President Joe Biden on the phone and met Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and President Duda in Warsaw that day. Then she rolled through the night to her first visit to Volodymyr Zelenskyj, which she had been preparing for months.

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