Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, whose Forza Italia (FI) party is part of the current government in Rome, on Sunday accused Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi of a war launched by Russia against Ukraine, which is opposed by the executive branch led by Reuters and EFE, cited by Agerpres, Georgia Maloney immediately announced the demarcation.

“If I were prime minister, I would never speak to Zelensky because, as you know, we are witnessing the devastation of his country and the killing of his soldiers and civilians,” Berlusconi said after voting in local elections in the province Lombardy. , referring to the meeting Georgia Maloney had this week in Brussels with Volodymyr Zelensky.

“In order to achieve peace, I think Mr. President of the United States should talk to Zelensky and tell him: ‘at the end of the war, you will have a $6, 7, 8 or 9 billion dollar Marshall Plan for the reconstruction of Ukraine.’ , but with one condition, that tomorrow you order a cease-fire, because we will not give you any more dollars or weapons.” This is the only way to convince this gentleman to order a cease-fire,” suggested the right-wing ex-Prime Minister of Italy.

One critical reaction to the statement came from the Democratic Party (PD), Italy’s center-left opposition party. “Today (Berlusconi) officially sided with Putin’s Russia. With such allies in the government, the Prime Minister (Georgia Maloney) should not complain about how she is treated in the EU,” wrote on Twitter the press secretary of senators from PD Simona Malpezzi.

But the government in Rome, after Berlusconi’s statement, assured that it “firmly” supports Ukraine in the face of the Russian invasion. “The Italian government’s support for Ukraine is firm and resolute, as is clearly stated in the program and in all parliamentary votes of the coalition that supports the executive,” said a source in the Italian government.

Berlusconi, who had a close relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom he also met in Russia’s annexed Crimean peninsula, is not the first to stir up controversy with his claims about a war started by Moscow. Ahead of September’s election that will bring his party to power, Silvio Berlusconi said his political entourage “pushed” Putin to launch an invasion of Ukraine to replace President Volodymyr Zelenskyi’s government with “decent people.”

“The mission of the two pro-Russian republics of Donbass went to Moscow, talked to everyone, on radio stations, with the press, on television, with people from (Putin’s) party, with ministers of the party, and then came to him as a delegation and told him: Zelensky has intensified the attacks of Ukrainian forces against our forces and our borders. We have now reached 16,000 dead. Please protect us, because if you don’t, we don’t know what will happen,” Berlusconi said at the time.

Then, according to him, Putin “was pushed by the Russian population, his party, his ministers to involve this special operation, as it was called at the beginning, and Russian troops were supposed to come in a week later to conquer Kyiv, replace Zelenskyi’s government with a government with decent people and to return from there in a week.”

But the plan failed: the Russian troops suffered heavy losses, meeting the fierce resistance of the Ukrainian army, which received Western weapons. Although it reached the outskirts of Kyiv, the Russian army did not launch any assault on the capital and eventually withdrew from there to focus on the offensive in southern and eastern Ukraine.

“I didn’t understand why Russian troops were spread around Ukraine, because, in my opinion, they should have concentrated only around Kyiv,” Berlusconi said.

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