Berlusconi: Putin didn’t want a war ad Zelensky pushed him to do so

The Former Italian Prime Minister and leader of the Forza Italia party, Silvio Berlusconi, told his party’s deputies in parliament that “Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has pushed his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin into an endless war”.

This was leaked through an audio recording obtained by an Italian news website, as the “Bloomberg” news agency reported that “the recording sheds more light on pressures to soften Italy’s position toward Russia after the victory of the center-right coalition in the elections that took place on September 25”.

Berlusconi’s comments come at a time when the leader of the right-wing coalition, Giorgia Meloni, is seeking to agree on ministerial posts with Berlusconi and other allies.

Meloni pledged not to change Italy’s pro-Ukrainian position, saying it “supports sending arms and aid to Ukraine”.

Meloni said, in a statement issued on Wednesday, commenting on Berlusconi’s statements, that she “won’t accept any ambiguity in foreign policy if she becomes prime minister”.

In an audio recording posted by the La Press news website on Wednesday, Berlusconi, 86, can be heard saying that “Putin didn’t want war, and was pushed into it because Ukraine continued to carry out attacks on the Ukrainian Donbas region”.

Berlusconi added that Zelensky threefold attacks against republics that wanted to join Russia after his election, and that Putin intervened to replace him with a government already formed by a Ukrainian minority and composed of honest and sane people.

“He entered Ukraine and found a situation he didn’t expect, from the resistance of the Ukrainians, who started receiving money and weapons from the West on the third day,” Berlusconi said.

“So, instead of being a two-week operation, the war has become a conflict for more than 200 years,” he continued.

In conjunction with the recordings, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Lorenzo Fontana, said, in comments broadcast on national television, that “sanctions against Russia could be counterproductive”.

The Forza Italia party denied, on Tuesday, that it had re-established contact with Putin, and said that its position on Ukraine was “in line” with that of Europe and the United States.

Berlusconi said late Wednesday that commitment to Europe and Western partners, including the United States, had always been “the basis of his work as a political leader and a man of government,” saying his comments were “taken out of context”.