He hasn't even been back in the Senate for a week and he's already running out of brakes. Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has again questioned the Atlanticist position of the next Italian right-wing executive by leaking a new part of the conversation he had on Tuesday with his parliamentarians, who applauded him while excusing Vladimir Putin from the invasion of Ukraine and blamed the war on the Ukrainian president, Volodímir Zelenski, for having "tripled the attacks" in the Donbass since his arrival in government.
In a new leak from the Italian outlet LaPresse, Berlusconi is heard recounting his version of what happened in Ukraine. "About this, I ask you, maximum secrecy," he demands of his group of senators and deputies. “The thing was like this: in 2014, in Minsk, Belarus, an agreement was signed between Ukraine and the two newly constituted republics of Donbass for a peace agreement without attacking each other. Ukraine spoils this treaty a year later and begins to attack the borders of the two republics. They suffer victims among the military who, according to what they tell me, reach between 5,000 and 7,000 dead. Zelensky arrives, triples attacks on the two republics. Desperate, they send a delegation to Putin”, he tells them, in a version similar to the one he gave in a television interview during the election campaign that caused a stir.
For the leader of Forza Italia, Putin “was against any initiative, resists and suffers enormous pressure throughout Russia. And he decides to invent a special operation: the troops were to arrive in Kyiv in a week, depose the government in command, Zelensky etc., and put in a government already elected by the Ukrainian minority of decent and common-sense people”.
The revelations come only a day after the first part of this private talk was made public, in which Berlusconi boasted that he had resumed relations with Putin, who gave him "twenty bottles of vodka" and a "sweet letter" for his 86th birthday, to which he responded with Lambrusco and another gracious letter. He also boasted that the Kremlin leader considers him "the first of five true friends of his."
In the second part of the audio, Berlusconi indicates that he does not see the possibility of Putin and Zelensky sitting down to negotiate. “Because there is no possible way. Zelensky, in my opinion... let it be, I can't say, ”he notes. In addition, he believes that the current situation is "dangerous" due to a lack of leadership in the West. “Unfortunately, in the Western world there are no leaders, there are none in Europe or the US. I'm not telling you what I know, but there are no true leaders. Can I make you smile? The only true leader is me”, says the founder of Forza Italia.
Giorgia Meloni is furious with Berlusconi, and threatens to kick him out of the future government. “Italy is proudly within Europe and NATO. Whoever does not agree, will not be able to be part of the government, at the cost of not forming a government”, she has warned in a statement. She will also not like the audio in the European People's Party, which endorses Forza Italia and its alliance with the extreme right. And above all, she removes ballots from Antonio Tajani, his number two, to become Foreign Minister. In the end, he was the first to defend him and justify that the gift of vodka was a thing of the past.
