Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s three-time former prime minister, whose party is forecast to return to government after the general election on Sunday, has sparked a row after defending the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, over the war in Ukraine.
The 85-year-old billionaire told Italian TV that Putin, an old friend of his, was pushed to invade
Ukraine by the Russian people and by ministers who wanted Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s administration replaced with “decent people”.
Berlusconi, who has condemned the war, told the chatshow Porta a Porta that separatists had gone to Moscow and told the media that Ukraine’s attacks had caused 16,000 deaths and that Putin was doing nothing to defend them.
“Putin was pushed by the Russian population, by his party and by his ministers to invent this special operation,” Berlusconi said. “The troops were supposed to enter, reach Kyiv within a week, replace Zelenskiy’s government with decent people and then leave. Instead they found resistance, which was then fed by arms of all kinds from the west.”