Is it blackmail? A threat? Or, instead, a demonstration of weakness? There are three ways to read the frontal attack that the Russian Foreign Ministry has carried out against Italy. And his last two governments, Conte and Draghi, accused of being “servile, shortsighted” and with a low “moral character”, as if to pretend to know confidential information about the private life of some of our public men.
In a message published on VKontakte, Moscow’s Facebook, Putin’s government has accused our country, our public television, Rai. And in particular the episode of Report on 9 May: in a report, what is emerging in the official (Copasir at work) and journalistic investigations on “From Russia with love”, the mission of the 104 Russian soldiers who arrived in Bergamo on 22 March 2020, was told in the most difficult moment of the battle against Covid to support us. Officially that was to be a humanitarian mission. But instead, as before Republic he said, it was above all an attempt to spy on our country. No doctors or experts were sent to help us. But service agents and technicians looking for data to produce the anti-Covid vaccine.
A reconstruction that the Russians have strongly contested. “On May 9, Victory Day – the Russian Foreign Ministry wrote yesterday in the message published on social media – the television channel Rai 3 instead of broadcasting documentaries on the heroism of the allied troops, including the Red Army, a low propaganda report is broadcast: our soldiers in Italy risked their lives “. In the note there is an explicit message to our politicians. “In 2020 the Italian partners – we read – have forgotten our help. A servile and short-sighted course of action that not only damages bilateral relations, but also demonstrates the moral character of the individual representatives of the official authorities of Italy and its average”.
To whom are these words addressed? To the Conte government certainly with whom the Russians made agreements for that mission that was born after a phone call between the then 5-star premier and Vladimir Putin and was stopped only by the Minister of Defense, Lorenzo Guerini, who after having collected the doubts of our military blocked the second phase of the mission. But, in the reading made yesterday by members of our intelligence, it seems to be a gesture of weakness. Or in any case a message intended for the internal public. It is not the first time that Russia has attacked Italy on this topic: “We stretched out a hand and you bit it” they said right after the controversy aroused by the article Republic. Then there is the chosen medium: when Russia wants to speak to the world it chooses Telegram or Twitter, where the note was not published. There was only on the channels of VKontakte, a favorite for internal affairs.