Twenty bottles of vodka and a "very sweet" menu. This is the gift that Vladimir Putin made to former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi for his 86th birthday, on September 29, after two decades of friendship. He told it himself during a meeting of the party's assembly in the Chamber of Deputies for the election of the spokesman, according to the Italian agency La Presse.
His party, Forza Italia, quickly denied it, assuring that it is an "old story related to an episode from many years ago." "Something old, from 2008", reiterated Antonio Tajani, number two of Il Cavaliere, who has many numbers to be the next foreign minister of Italy. Shortly after, the agency has made public an audio that shows that Berlusconi had pronounced these words.
The leader of Forza Italia explained to his followers that he responded to the Russian president with bottles of Lambrusco and another "just as sweet letter". "I knew him as a peaceful and sensible person," he declared. The Forza Italia founder also noted that he has “restored relations” with the Kremlin leader, cooled by the Ukraine invasion.
“Russian ministers have already said on several occasions that we are at war with them because we give weapons and finance Ukraine. I cannot give my personal opinion because if it were told to the press it would be a disaster, but I am very, very, very worried”, he said, about the war. “Too many times we hear about interventions with nuclear bombs. God save us from that moment. Ukraine has even asked to join NATO. If he entered, the war would be worldwide”.
Berlusconi and Putin had a close relationship for two decades. The president of Mediaset defined him as a little "brother", and they have invited each other several times in their residences privately. The Italian tycoon, who supported the Russian annexation of Crimea, was banned from entering Ukraine for three years for drinking, on a visit with the Russian president to a winery on the peninsula in 2015, a bottle of 240-year-old sherry .
These revelations again put Giorgia Meloni in trouble, who defends that under his next government Italy will not be the weak point of the West against Russia. The day before the closing of the electoral campaign, Berlusconi already caused problems by stating on television that Putin was pushed to "invent this special operation" so that the Russians "enter Kyiv in a week to replace the Zelensky government with people of good ”.Meloni's other partner, Matteo Salvini, from the League, also asked during the campaign to withdraw the sanctions against Russia because he considered that they did not work.
Everything happens while the right-wing coalition finalizes its government team after Berlusconi and Meloni made peace after a resounding row over the list of ministers. One of the last nodes to resolve is the Ministry of Justice, which for Brothers of Italy should go to former magistrate Carlo Nordio, but as reported today by Berlusconi, the agreement is for the former president of the Senate Elisabetta Casellati. He has also announced that Forza Italia will have the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Public Administration, Universities and Ecological Transition. Meloni could receive at the end of this week the task of forming the government of the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, and be sworn in a few days later.
