DMitri Medvedev, former president and prime minister of Russia, currently deputy chief of President Vladimir Putin’s Security Council, relishes the role of Moscow’s rough-and-tumble man. At the end of July, he confessed his abysmal hatred of the West in a post on Telegram. You are dealing there with “bastards and scum” who have to be “disappeared”. After the resignation of Prime Minister Mario Draghi on July 21, Medvedev posted the photos of Draghi and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who had previously resigned, on Telegram, placed a black box next to them with a big question mark and sneered: “Who’s next?”
Five weeks before the snap parliamentary elections on September 25 in Italy, Medvedev has now, again in a tirade on Telegram, given Italian voters an unequivocal recommendation for voting. “We would like the citizens of Europe to go to the polls not only to express their dissatisfaction with the actions of their governments, but also to punish them for their blatant stupidity,” Medvedev wrote. Because the furor of these governments to “sever all relations with Russia” will lead to “cold apartments and empty refrigerators”.
Lega has close ties to Putin’s party
Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio described “the Russian government’s interference in the Italian elections” as “really worrying”. Di Maio called on his country’s political forces to “dissociate themselves clearly and without hesitation from Russian propaganda”. At the same time, he assured that the outgoing government would continue to do everything possible to reduce Italy’s dependence on Russian gas: “You can’t be dependent on someone who uses Italian money to finance their bloody war in Ukraine.” Italy moved in at the beginning of the war on February 24, 40 percent of its natural gas from Russia, now it’s 25 percent.
Winston Churchill prophesied of Italy as the “soft underbelly” of Europe from where an Allied attack on the Axis powers would have the best chance of success. In its hybrid warfare against the West, Russia too is once again concentrating on this “soft abdomen” of Europe. At the end of July, the liberal Turin daily “La Stampa”, citing secret service sources, reported that in the run-up to the fall of Prime Minister Draghi there had been contacts between the right-wing nationalist Lega party of former Interior Minister Matteo Salvini and the Russian embassy in Rome.
The conversation at the end of May was about the question of whether the Lega could withdraw its three ministers from the cabinet of the non-party Prime Minister Mario Draghi. The Lega has maintained good relations with the Kremlin party United Russia for many years. The two parties signed a five-year cooperation agreement in 2017. The Lega says the agreement has not been extended. Salvini and the Lega categorically reject the suspicion that Moscow had a hand in Draghi’s fall.
Berlusconi and Putin have been on vacation together
Former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and his Christian Democratic party, Forza Italia, do the same. Berlusconi had very close relations with Putin for many years, but after Moscow’s attack on Ukraine he said he was “deeply disappointed” in his male friend, with whom he had spent many a vacation. During the debate about further Italian arms deliveries to Kyiv, Salvini and Berlusconi repeatedly expressed skepticism and instead pushed for direct negotiations between Kyiv and Moscow.
The appearance of the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on May 1 on the program “Zona Bianca”, a political talk show of the Berlusconi channel “Rete 4”, is memorable. For almost an hour in the “interview” Lavrov was able to spread Moscow’s propaganda about the Russian “special operation” in Ukraine unfiltered without any questions being asked. Shortly thereafter, the Intelligence Committee of the two chambers of the Italian Parliament began investigations into whether and how “Russian disinformation” was seeping into the country’s traditional and social media via the numerous pro-Moscow commentators and influencers. At the beginning of June, the conservative-liberal newspaper Corriere della Sera published a list of almost a dozen pro-Russian journalists, economists, political scientists and historians who were particularly outstanding in defending Moscow’s position and who found a surprising amount of space in the media.
At the end of July, the left-leaning newspaper La Repubblica, citing intelligence sources, revealed that Moscow was apparently even involved in controlling migration flows across the Mediterranean to Italy. According to this, most of the refugee boats that have recently reached Italy and the island of Lampedusa come from Libya – and not from Tunisia as in the previous months. The stretch of coast from which the migrant boats depart is controlled by renegade Libyan general Chalifa Haftar, who is in turn supported by Russian Wagner mercenaries. Apparently, the troops close to the Kremlin are ensuring that more and more migrants are making their way north towards Italy. A good 50,000 migrants have reached Italy since the beginning of the year, compared to 35,000 in the same period last year and almost 17,000 in 2020. An intensified migration crisis, according to Moscow’s calculations, will primarily play into the hands of Lega boss Salvini in the election campaign. Salvini visited the overcrowded reception center on Lampedusa in early August and promised that if the elections were won, the flow of illegal migrants would be stopped.
