For Silvio Berlusconi, former head of the Italian government who traveled with Vladimir Putin to Crimea following the annexation of the Russian province by Moscow in 2014, the master of the Kremlin was “pushed” by its population and its entourage to invade Ukraine.
“Putin found himself in a really difficult and dramatic situation“, explained Thursday evening in a political program on public television Rai the boss of Forza Italia (right) who is running for the legislative elections on Sunday in coalition with two far-right parties, Fratelli d’Italia by Giorgia Meloni and the League of Matteo Salvini.
These three formations should win the elections, according to the polls.
“A mission from the two pro-Russian republics of Donbass went to Moscow, spoke with everyone, the radios, the press, the television, with people from (Putin’s) party, party ministers, and then went see him in delegation to tell him: ‘Zelensky has intensified the attacks of the Ukrainian forces once morest our forces on our borders. We are now at 16,000 dead. Please stand up for us because if you don’t we don’t know what’s going to happen'”he developed.
Pushed to a “special operation”
According to him, Putin was then “pushed by the Russian people, by their party, by their ministers, to start this special operation, that’s what it was originally called, according to which Russian troops were to enter and within a week rally kyiv, replace the Zelensky government by a government of decent people and in a week leave once more“.
His remarks sparked an outcry, and Silvio Berlusconi felt on Thursday that they had “extrapolated and simplified“, evoking a war “unjustifiable” and reaffirming its support for NATO, the EU and the United States.
The leader of the Democratic Party (PD), Enrico Letta, given second place in the legislative elections behind Giorgia Meloni, castigated “scandalous and serious statements“.
Putin’s puppets
On Twitter, Pieyre-Alexandre Anglade, president of the European Affairs Committee of the National Assembly in France, accused Berlusconi, Meloni and Salvini of being “Putin’s puppets“.
“The consequences of this Sunday’s elections in Italy will go beyond the borders of the peninsula. It is the unity of Europe once morest Russia that is also at stake“, he estimated.
The Spanish Socialist MEP Iratxe Garcia Perez for her part denounced “shocking words“.