“It has undermined the image of Italy”

Oct. 20 () –

The former Prime Minister of Italy and president of the Five Star Movement party, Giuseppe Conte, described this Wednesday as “serious and unacceptable” the leaked statements by the leader of Fuerza Italia, Silvio Berlusconi, in which he assured that Vladimir Putin did not want to start the war against Ukraine and in which he blamed the Ukrainian president, Volodimir Zelenski, for the beginning of the Russian invasion of his country.

The leader of the third political force after the elections on September 25 has accused the right wing of “undermining Italy’s image”, assuring that Berlusconi’s words about the war in Ukraine prevent his party, Fuerza Italia, from obtaining the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the next government.

“In light of Berlusconi’s latest and most comprehensive statements on the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, a problem for our country is revealed. I don’t think it can be acceptable for Force Italy to get the Foreign Ministry. It is a serious problem for Italy’s credibility abroad,” Conte said in statements collected by ‘Corriere della Sera’.

In this sense, Conte has announced that he will raise this issue “clearly” with the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, who begins consultations with the political parties this Thursday to propose the formation of a new Executive.

During the afternoon of this Wednesday, the Italian agency LaPresse has released a new audio in which the leader of Fuerza Italia states that the Ukrainian president would be responsible for the war in Ukraine since he would have “tripled” the attacks on the two self-proclaimed regions Donbas republics: Donestk and Lugansk.

“The two republics suffer victims among the soldiers who arrive, they tell me, 5,000, 6,000, 7,000 dead. Zelensky arrives: he triples the attacks on the two republics,” Berlusconi stressed, after what he described as later being sent a delegation to Moscow to speak with the Russian president.

The former Italian prime minister has stressed that, faced with “strong pressure from all of Russia”, Putin decides to “invent a special operation” to enter Ukraine with his troops and depose the Ukrainian government, as well as its president, in less than a week .

REACTIONS AMONG FUTURE GOVERNMENT PARTNERS

After the leak of the audio, sources from the party that won the elections on September 25, Brothers of Italy, have told the AndKronos news agency that they are “worrying words.” “It’s a problem for Fuerza Italia. The more unreliable they are, the less space they will have,” the source said.

In fact, the leader of the Brothers of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, has defended Italy as a fundamental country of the Atlantic Alliance and the European Union. “Whoever does not agree with this pillar will not be able to form part of the government,” she has sentenced.

“I intend to lead a government with a clear and unambiguous foreign policy line. Italy is fully, and with its head held high, part of Europe and the Atlantic Alliance (…). Italy, with us in government, will never It will be the weak link in the West”, Meloni has expressed in statements collected by ‘Il Post’.

In the other partner of the future government coalition, the League, the confessions of the former prime minister would have surprised, however. The leader of this formation, Matteo Salvini, has expressed his astonishment in a meeting with the League executive, according to the AdnKronos agency.

However, the party led by Salvini has assured that the leak of Berlusconi’s audio is due to a strategy of the left and the media that “fuel tensions”.

“The left and its media continue to fuel tensions, but the League is determined to bring the government of the right to life to live up to expectations. All the mud and falsehoods these days are material for our lawyers,” he said. the party in a letter.