Her name is Giorgia Meloni and you probably haven’t finished hearing about her. After the legislative elections on September 25, she could become the first woman to lead a government in Italy. A revolution certainly, but which hardly delights the foreign press, because with it it is the advent of the extreme right in one of the founding countries of the European Union which is emerging.
“His name is Meloni. As she likes to recall, she’s a woman, she’s a mother, she’s a Catholic. But it is above all the good fairy of the old right, in a new guise. If she wins, if Giorgia Meloni really becomes the first woman to sit in the presidency of the Italian Council, we might not have fascists in government. Maybe not. But we would have something very much like a Marine Le Pen at the Élysée,” écrit The Republic in the long portrait of the leader of the Fratelli d’Italia party that we translated at the opening of the cover file this week.
From her (poor) origins to her (often dubious) entourage, the left-wing daily retraces the itinerary of a woman who now defines herself as conservative and Atlanticist, but whose inner circle remains imbued with a clearly neo-fascist ideology. “If Giorgia Meloni’s right takes responsibility, it will be in the shadow of an emblem still struck by the flame, the very one that burns on the tomb of Benito Mussolini, explains the newspaper. Because, like certain values – God, family, homeland – the original flame will never go out for these people.”
While the Swedish far right has just established itself as the second political force in the country, while in France the National Rally now has 89 deputies, in Italy, Giorgia Meloni is on her way to achieving the unthinkable. And could inspire other bands, like Vox in Spain… Enough to make Europe tremble. It is in this spirit that we have chosen the title of the front page.
For several weeks, we had planned to decipher at length this Italy which seems on the verge of tipping over. We finally resized the file in view of the latest events in Ukraine, which could mark a turning point in the war, even if the uncertainties around a military conflict make it difficult to guess, relativizes the site The confidential.
It prevents. The Ukrainian army’s surprise counter-offensive in the northeast of the country took the Russian army by surprise while revealing its weaknesses. “Gone is the unshakable rock image of the Russian military”, estimates a kyiv-based military expert on the site Ukrainian Truth. “The defeat in Kharkiv sent a signal to the whole world: Ukraine can win”, wants to believe the expert. The British Magazine The Economist also made his cover, which title: “Go until the end”. If a “victory of Ukraine is not yet certain, notes the weekly, a path is emerging”.
Are we really there? This is what we are trying to decipher in this second exceptional dossier. Admittedly, Vladimir Putin seems increasingly isolated, as Ivan Krastev writes in the Financial Times. But it would be wrong to rejoice: because the master of the Kremlin finds himself cornered politically by the more radical fringe of the regime. “The only option left to Putin, if he refuses to decree the general mobilization [réclamée par les ultras]is to plunge Ukraine further into darkness, estimated by Ivan Krastev. In the short term, therefore, kyiv’s counteroffensive should end in an escalation.”
What to fear the worst. The Ukrainian advance also revealed, as new towns were liberated, the seriousness of the abuses committed by the Russian army against the civilian population, as in Izium, where Ukraine once again accuses the army Russian war crimes. Exactions widely condemned by Westerners, who seem more determined than ever, Americans in the lead, to support kyiv militarily.
If there is a turning point, it is perhaps also and above all that of a major aggravation of the conflict. In any case, this is the path that the pro-Russian separatists seem to have chosen when announcing that referendums on annexation to Russia would be organized from Friday, September 23 in Donbass and Kherson. A potentially explosive provocation.