PARIS (Reuters) -France summoned the Italian ambassador after Italy’s deputy prime minister challenged the French president for suggesting that European soldiers be deployed in Ukraine in a post-war settlement, a French diplomatic source said on Saturday.

Asked earlier this week to comment on French President Emmanuel Macron’s appeals to deploy European soldiers in Ukraine after any settlement with Russia, Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini used a Milanese dialect phrase loosely translatable as “get lost”.

“You go there if you want. Put your helmet on, your jacket, your rifle and you go to Ukraine,” he told reporters, referring to Macron.

Salvini, the populist leader of the right-wing League party and also Italy’s transport minister in the nationalist, conservative government led by G

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