It is an impression that one clearly feels when watching Italian television. During the countless TV shows where the war in Ukraine is discussed, it is not uncommon to hear guests being rather understanding towards Russia.
If on the one hand giving an echo to these opinions responds to a logic of spectacularization of the programs (through clashes between guests which increase the audience), for He Post this trend also responds to a deeper feeling in Italian society. A society that would simply be more “Russophile” than most of its neighbors in Western Europe, as shown by certain studies relayed by the news site:
“In 2017, a report by the Wilfried Martens Center [think tank officiel du Parti populaire européen] placed Italy, along with Greece and Cyprus, among the countries ‘collaborating with the Kremlin’, writing that Italians ‘do not feel threatened by Russia’. In April 2021, according to a poll by the Pew Research Center, Italy was the second European country after Greece, in terms of the percentage of the population saying they trust Putin (36% against a European average of 22% ).”
However, according to the center-left transalpine media, the Russian tropism of a certain part of the Italian population dates from well before Putin’s arrival in power, and then