RE: Martial Law WHAT.....!!!!!21 Oct 2022 08:44
What else has swerved our media?
Italy’s far-right coalition in turmoil over Berlusconi Ukraine comments
Former Italian PM accused Ukraine’s president of provoking Russian invasion in leaked recording
Lorenzo Tondo in Palermo
Thu 20 Oct 2022 18.42 EDT
Silvio Berlusconi has claimed that President Volodymyr Zelenskiy “provoked” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, triggering a fresh political row and threatening the stability of Italy’s new government just days before it is expected to take power.
Berlusconi, the three-time former prime minister and leader of Forza Italia party – a junior partner in a far-right coalition that won September’s general election – is at the centre of political turmoil after a series of leaked audio recordings in which he says that he has reconnected with Vladimir Putin and blames Zelenskiy for causing Moscow to invade.
In the latest clip published by the La Presse agency on Wednesday, Berlusconi can be heard defending his “old friend” Putin, and saying that Zelenskiy provoked Moscow’s invasion by “tripling the attacks” against the Russian-backed separatists in Donbas.
“The Republics of the Donbas eventually sent a delegation to Moscow and told Putin: ‘Please, defend us!’,” Berlusconi said. “Putin was against any initiative but he was under a big pressure from the Russian people and so he invented this special operation: the plan was that his troops had to enter Ukraine, overthrow Zelenskiy and replace him with a government formed by a Ukrainian minority, formed by honest, sensible people.’’
Berlusconi added that when the Russian military invaded Ukraine, they were “faced with a situation Putin could not have predicted, of resistance from the Ukrainians who started receiving money and weapons from the west. And the special operation became a 200-year war.”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/20/italys-far-right-coalition-in-turmoil-over-berlusconi-ukraine-comments