AP

Italy’s Meloni issues warning to Berlusconi over Putin ties

Oct 18, 2022, 10:53 AM | Updated: Oct 19, 2022, 12:06 pm

FILE - Italian former Premier Silvio Berlusconi, right, and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin t...

FILE - Italian former Premier Silvio Berlusconi, right, and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin talk during a press conference at Villa Gernetto, in Gerno, near Milan, Italy, Monday April 26, 2010. Just in time to celebrate his 86th birthday, Italy's former premier Silvio Berlusconi is making his return to Italy's parliament, winning a seat in the Senate nearly a decade after being banned from public office over a tax fraud conviction. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno, file)

(AP Photo/Luca Bruno, file)


              FILE - Italian former Premier Silvio Berlusconi, right, and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin talk during a press conference at Villa Gernetto, in Gerno, near Milan, Italy, Monday April 26, 2010. Just in time to celebrate his 86th birthday, Italy's former premier Silvio Berlusconi is making his return to Italy's parliament, winning a seat in the Senate nearly a decade after being banned from public office over a tax fraud conviction. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno, file)
            
              FILE - Italian former Premier Silvio Berlusconi, right, and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin talk during a press conference at Villa Gernetto, in Gerno, near Milan, Italy, Monday April 26, 2010. Just in time to celebrate his 86th birthday, Italy's former premier Silvio Berlusconi is making his return to Italy's parliament, winning a seat in the Senate nearly a decade after being banned from public office over a tax fraud conviction. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno, file)
            
              FILE - Italian former Premier Silvio Berlusconi, right, and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin talk during a press conference at Villa Gernetto, in Gerno, near Milan, Italy, Monday April 26, 2010. Just in time to celebrate his 86th birthday, Italy's former premier Silvio Berlusconi is making his return to Italy's parliament, winning a seat in the Senate nearly a decade after being banned from public office over a tax fraud conviction. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno, file)
            
              Silvio Berlusconi is mobbed by press as he leaves a reunion to decide the group leaders of at the Lower Chamber, in Rome, Tuesday, Oct.18, 2022. ( Cecilia Fabiano/LaPresse via AP)
            
              Silvio Berlusconi is mobbed by press as he leaves a reunion to decide the group leaders of at the Lower Chamber, in Rome, Tuesday, Oct.18, 2022. ( Cecilia Fabiano/LaPresse via AP)
            
              FILE-- From left, The League's Matteo Salvini, Forza Italia's Silvio Berlusconi, and Brothers of Italy's Giorgia Meloni attend the electoral campaign final rally of the center-right coalition in central Rome, Thursday, Sept. 22, 2022 . (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
            
              FILE - Forza Italia's Silvio Berlusconi, and Brothers of Italy's Giorgia Meloni attend the center-right coalition closing rally in Rome Thursday, Sept. 22, 2022. The resounding victory by far-right leader Giorgia Meloni in Sept. 25 elections for Parliament isn't sitting well with Silvio Berlusconi, the former three-time conservative premier who, 40 years her senior, fancies himself the elder statesman of Italy's political right. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia, File)

ROME (AP) — Italy’s presumed next premier, Giorgia Meloni, issued a stark warning to Silvio Berlusconi on Wednesday that he risked losing influence in any new government over his friendship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, as she asserted a strong pro-NATO, pro-European position about Russia’s war in Ukraine.

“Italy will never be the weak link of the West with us in government,” Meloni said in a statement late Wednesday.

She was responding to private comments by Berlusconi to his Forza Italia lawmakers this week in which the three-time premier boasted of having re-established contact with Putin and exchanged gifts of vodka and wine over his recent 86th birthday, while justifying Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

“I have reconnected with President Putin — a little, a lot,” Berlusconi was heard saying in comments that were recorded and released by the LaPresse news agency. “He sent me 20 bottles of vodka and a really sweet letter for my birthday. I responded with 20 bottles of Lambrusco (a sparkling Italian red wine) and a similarly sweet letter.”

Berlusconi’s comments added to the political upheaval in Italy as Meloni, whose far-right Brothers of Italy party won the most votes in the Sept. 25 election, tries to put together a Cabinet. She is expected to get a mandate to form Italy’s next government as early as this week.

Berlusconi’s center-right Forza Italia party, the junior partner in her right-wing coalition, is gunning for the foreign ministry, at a time when Meloni and the EU have strongly backed Ukraine in Russia’s war. Some analysts suggested Berlusconi was intentionally trying to sabotage her future government.

Breaking a daylong silence, Meloni insisted she will lead a government with a clear foreign policy.

“Italy, with its head high, is part of Europe and the (NATO) Atlantic alliance,” she said. “Whoever doesn’t agree with this cornerstone cannot be part of the government, at the cost of not having a government.”

Berlusconi has a long-standing friendship with Putin: He has entertained the Russian leader at his villa on Sardinia and even visited Crimea with Putin in 2014 after the Russian leader annexed the peninsula from Ukraine.

After releasing a first audio recording Tuesday about Berlusconi re-establishing contact with Putin over gifts and “sweet” birthday notes, LaPresse on Wednesday published another recording, apparently from the same session, in which Berlusconi seemingly defended Putin’s decision to try to oust the Ukrainian government.

Berlusconi spoke disparagingly of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, accused him of provoking the conflict by increasing attacks on the eastern Donbas after 2014, when Russia-backed separatists started fighting Ukrainian troops. He said Putin’s “special operation” in Ukraine was supposed to have lasted just two weeks to install a “decent, sensible” government in Kyiv.

But thanks to “unexpected and unforeseen” Ukrainian resistance and funding and weapons from the West that arrived “on Day 3, a special operation that was supposed to have lasted two weeks has become a war that will last some 200-plus years,” Berlusconi said.

He claimed there were no “true leaders” left in Europe or the U.S.

European Commission spokeswoman, Nabila Massrali, asked to respond to his comments Wednesday, said EU nations are free to conduct bilateral contacts with Moscow while respecting the EU policy to scale down such relations “to the necessary minimum.”

“The priority of these contacts should of course convey EU positions regarding the illegitimate invasion and aggression against Ukraine and call on Russian counterparts to stop it immediately and comply with international law,” she said.

Vodka imports from Russia are banned but Massrali said she would inquire whether that ban also applies to gifts.

In previous comments, Berlusconi seemed to justify Russia’s invasion by saying Putin was forced into it by pro-Moscow separatists in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine — a similar scenario he painted in the recording published Wednesday.

“The troops were supposed to enter, reach Kyiv within a week, replace (Ukrainian President Volodymyr) Zelenskyy’s government with decent people and then leave,” Berlusconi told his favorite late-night talk show host on Sept. 22.

Berlusconi’s office at first tried to deny his comments about the birthday vodka. In a statement Tuesday, his office insisted that he hadn’t restarted relations with Putin and that Berlusconi “told an old story to lawmakers about a episode that occurred years ago.”

Hours later, after the audio was released, Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party tried to distance itself from the comments.

“The position of Forza Italia and President Silvio Berlusconi with respect to the Ukrainian conflict and Russian responsibilities is known to all and is in line with the position of Europe and the United States,” the party said. “There are no margins of ambiguity, nor have there ever been.”

The opposition Democratic Party’s Enrico Letta, who has warned that Meloni’s far-right-led coalition represents a threat to democracy, pounced on Berlusconi’s comments and said they undermined the credibility of any Meloni government.

“Any government that is born in Europe today has to choose whether to be with Putin, or with Ukraine and the European Union,” Letta said. “The Meloni government is being born under the worst sign of ambiguity.”

___

Raf Casert contributed from Brussels.

___

Follow all AP stories on the impact of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine.

Copyright © The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

AP

Image: A cargo ship is stuck under the part of the structure of the Francis Scott Key Bridge after ...

Associated Press

Authorities identify 2 bodies recovered at site of Baltimore bridge collapse

A major bridge in Baltimore snapped and collapsed after a container ship rammed into it early Tuesday, and several vehicles fell into the river below.

1 day ago

Photo: Mountaineer Jim Whittaker has died at 95....

Gene Johnson, The Associated Press

Lou Whittaker, among the most famous American mountaineers, has died at age 95

Lou Whittaker, a legendary American mountaineer who helped lead ascents of Mount Everest, K2 and Denali, has died at age 95.

1 day ago

File photo: Former Sen. Joe Lieberman speaks in Washington on Jan. 18, 2024....

Associated Press

Former Sen. Joe Lieberman, Democrats’ VP pick in 2000, dead at 82

Former U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, who nearly won the vice presidency on the Democratic ticket with Al Gore in 2000, has died.

1 day ago

islamic state attack...

Vanessa Gera, The Associated Press

What we know after the Islamic State group claims responsibility for Moscow massacre

The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for an attack on a suburban Moscow concert hall that killed at least 133 people.

5 days ago

Moscow shooting...

The Associated Press

Russia: 60 dead, 145 injured in concert hall raid; Islamic State group claims responsibility

Assailants burst into a concert hall in Moscow on Friday and sprayed the crowd with gunfire, killing over 60 people, injuring more than 100.

7 days ago

Photo: Britain's Kate, Duchess of Cambridge visits 282 (East Ham) Squadron, RAF Air Cadets, Cornwel...

Associated Press

Kate Middleton announces she has cancer, is undergoing chemotherapy

Kate Middleton, Princess of Wales, says she is undergoing chemotherapy to treat cancer. She has been out of view since Christmas.

7 days ago

Italy’s Meloni issues warning to Berlusconi over Putin ties