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Written by Piero Messina
Italy’s new far-right government crashed before starting work. The elections of 25 September gave the Italian right an absolute majority. But the unconventional “Ukraine” undermines the foundations of the new government that has yet to take office. In the coming days Giorgia Meloni (head of the Brothers of Italy party, a movement that has roots in neo-fascism) should be given the task of forming the new government team. At his side are Matteo Salvini (leader of the League) and the former president of the government and leader of Forza Italia, Silvio Berlusconi, re-elected to parliament after a stop linked to legal events.
The majority seemed compact. Of course, someone imagined that Giorgia Meloni was changing the Italian geopolitical strategy with respect to the Russia-Ukraine affair. Many remember when Meloni argued that sanctions on Russia were useless. But in recent months the political narrative has changed, and even before the vote on 25 September, Meloni clarified his pro-Atlantic position, confirming the approach initiated by the former Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi: loyal to NATO and ready to supply weapons and ammunition the government of Kiev.
But now, on the eve of the formation of the new government, the Italian right is shattering precisely on the political position to maintain with respect to the Ukraine dossier.
Silvio Berlusconi has spoken. A speech of his reserved to the elected parliamentarians of his party was broadcast online. Here’s what Berlusconi said, here’s how Berlusconi analyzes the Russian-Ukrainian conflict: “It went like this: in 2014 in Minsk, Belarus, an agreement was signed between Ukraine and the two newly formed republics of Donbass for a peace agreement without anyone attacking the other. Ukraine throws this treaty to the devil a year later and begins to attack the borders of the two republics. The two republics suffer casualties among the military who arrive, I am told, at 5-6-7 thousand dead. Zelensky arrives, attacks on the two republics tripled “. Putin, in Berlusconi’s version, is opposed to any initiative, resists, undergoes strong pressure from all over Russia. And then he decides to invent a special operation. “He entered Ukraine and was faced with an unexpected and unpredictable situation of resistance from the Ukrainians, who started receiving money and weapons from the West from the third day. And the war, instead of being an operation of two weeks, it became a war of two hundred-and-a-half years. So, this is the situation of the war in Ukraine. “
In short, for anyone who knows the recent and older history of that piece of Europe, Berlusconi has told – perhaps in his own way, with some histrionic notes – a story that everyone knows and everyone knows to be true, at least in its essential parts. Yet it was banned. Giorgia Meloni threatens to kick Forza Italia and Berlusconi out of the government. The mainstream media thunders madly against what is called Berlusconi’s latest madness. Yet, for once at least, the elderly Forza Italia leader has only told the truth.
