There's no reason why the language barrier will be there in Italy but not in Ukraine. Will definitely not affect offshore devs coming on your turf (like with Poland, which imports a lot of Ukrainian and Russian IT workforce).

If London and Zurich can afford IT consultancies, why not Italy? 'cause I've not heard of those.

WRT "south dragging Italy down", I actually don't think this is true. I think it's more like an excuse.