Italy’s incoming premier Giorgia Meloni has issued a stark warning to Silvio Berlusconi that he risked losing influence in a new government due to his friendship with Vladimir Putin as she asserted a strong pro-Nato position on Russia’s war in Ukraine.
“Italy will never be the weak link of the West with us in government,” Ms Meloni said.
She was responding to private comments by Mr Berlusconi to his Forza Italia lawmakers this week in which the three-time premier boasted of having re-established contact with Mr Putin and exchanged gifts of vodka and wine over his recent 86th birthday, while justifying Mr Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
“I have reconnected with President Putin — a little, a lot,” Mr Berlusconi was heard saying in comments that were recorded and released by the LaPresse news agency.
“He sent me 20 bottles of vodka and a really sweet letter for my birthday. I responded with 20 bottles of Lambrusco (a sparkling Italian red wine) and a similarly sweet letter.”
Mr Berlusconi’s comments added to the political upheaval in Italy as Ms Meloni, whose far-right Brothers of Italy party won the most votes in the September 25 election, tries to put together a Cabinet. She is expected to get a mandate to form Italy’s next government as early as this week.
Mr Berlusconi’s centre-right Forza Italia party, the junior partner in her right-wing coalition, is gunning for the foreign ministry, at a time when Ms Meloni and the EU have strongly backed Ukraine in Russia’s war.
Some analysts suggested Mr Berlusconi was intentionally trying to sabotage her future government.
Breaking a day-long silence, Ms Meloni insisted she will lead a government with a clear foreign policy.
“Italy, with its head high, is part of Europe and the (Nato) Atlantic alliance,” she said. “Whoever doesn’t agree with this cornerstone cannot be part of the government, at the cost of not having a government.”
Mr Berlusconi has a long-standing friendship with Mr Putin. He has entertained the Russian leader at his villa on Sardinia and even visited Crimea with Mr Putin in 2014 after the Russian leader annexed the peninsula from Ukraine.
After releasing a first audio recording on Tuesday about Mr Berlusconi re-establishing contact with Mr Putin over gifts and “sweet” birthday notes, LaPresse on Wednesday published another recording, apparently from the same session, in which Mr Berlusconi seemingly defended Putin’s decision to try to oust the Ukrainian government.
Mr Berlusconi spoke disparagingly of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, accused him of provoking the conflict by increasing attacks on the eastern Donbas after 2014, when Russia-backed separatists started fighting Ukrainian troops.
He said Mr Putin’s “special operation” in Ukraine was supposed to have lasted just two weeks to install a “decent, sensible” government in Kyiv.
But thanks to “unexpected and unforeseen” Ukrainian resistance and funding and weapons from the West that arrived “on Day 3, a special operation that was supposed to have lasted two weeks has become a war that will last some 200-plus years”, Mr Berlusconi said.
He claimed there were no “true leaders” left in Europe or the US.
European Commission spokeswoman Nabila Massrali said EU nations are free to conduct bilateral contacts with Moscow while respecting the EU policy to scale down such relations “to the necessary minimum”.
“The priority of these contacts should of course convey EU positions regarding the illegitimate invasion and aggression against Ukraine and call on Russian counterparts to stop it immediately and comply with international law,” she said.
Vodka imports from Russia are banned but Ms Massrali said she would inquire whether that ban also applies to gifts.
