It is a friendship that is causing disorder in the Western camp in the midst of the war in Ukraine. Silvio Berlusconi drew a volley of green wood on Wednesday in Italy after saying he was “reconnecting” with Vladimir Putin and blaming kyiv for the invasion of Ukraine.
“Berlusconi in freewheel”, “Berlusconi without brake”, and even, for the RepublicGiorgia “Meloni hostage of the pro-Russians”: the Italian press on Wednesday echoed the confidences made this week by the billionaire to deputies of his party, Forza Italia.
Vodka and Lambrusco bottles
His words were leaked and those around him initially denied it, but an audio recording was then released, shocking Giorgia Meloni, the future Prime Minister who is working to form a government with her coalition allies, Forza. Italia and the League of Matteo Salvini.
“I reconnected with President Putin a little, a little a lot, in the sense that for my birthday, Putin sent me 20 bottles of vodka and a very nice letter. I responded by sending him bottles of Lambrusco and a very nice letter. He told me that I was the first of his five real friends, ”continued the former head of government who celebrated his 86th birthday on September 29. Hastily, Forza Italia issued a statement to clarify the position of the party and Silvio Berlusconi vis-à-vis Russia and Ukraine, “in line with that of Europe and the United States”.
The leftist opposition went wild. “It’s not folklore, it’s not jokes. The new majority is initiating a change in Italy’s trajectory towards an increasingly ambiguous position towards Russia,” denounced Enrico Letta, the head of the Democratic Party. The declarations of Silvio Berlusconi could especially weaken the position of Antonio Tajani, a close, pro-European, approached for Foreign Affairs.
recurring statements
This is not a first for Silvio Berlusconi. During the election campaign, he had already provoked indignation by asserting that Vladimir Putin had wanted to overthrow the government of kyiv to put in its place “good people”. In the rest of the audio recording, a new part of which leaked on Wednesday evening, he also seems to blame the war on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky who, according to him, “has tripled the attacks” against the self-proclaimed separatist republics of the Donbass.
Faced with the outcry raised by these latest statements, Silvio Berlusconi made a point of specifying that his “personal position and that of Forza Italia do not deviate from that of the Italian government, the European Union, the Atlantic Alliance nor on the crisis in Ukraine or on other major international political issues”. He also stressed that it would be “impossible to achieve peace if Ukraine’s rights are not adequately protected”.