The Italian government on Tuesday summoned the Russian ambassador to Rome after Moscow’s diplomatic propagandist Vladimir Solovyov hurled a barrage of vulgar insults against Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni during a television broadcast.
La Stampa reports that Solovyov, a notorious Kremlin propagandist, delivered the insults during a broadcast of his show Polnyj Kontakt (“Full Contact”), branding Meloni as a “fascist, certified idiot, a nasty little woman” and referring to her as “PuttaMeloni” (“Whore Meloni”).
Sky TG24 detailed that Solovyov also condemned Meloni as a “disgrace to the human race, a natural beast, a certified idiot, a wicked little woman.”
“This Meloni, a fascist scoundrel, who betrayed her own voters by running on very different slogans. But betrayal is her middle name,” the Russian propagandist reportedly said. “She betrayed Trump, to whom she had previously sworn allegiance.”
The Italian government responded by elevating a formal diplomatic protest to Russia over Solovyov’s insults against Meloni, as well as summoning the Moscow’s ambassador to Rome Alexey Paramonov.
“I had the Russian ambassador Paramonov summoned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to express formal protests following the extremely serious and offensive statements made by the host Vladimir Solovyev on Russian television against the Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, to whom I extend all my solidarity and closeness,” Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani wrote on social media.
Prime Minister Meloni addressed the situation through a social media post in which she said that, by its very nature, a “zealous regime propagandist cannot lecture others on either consistency or freedom.”
But these caricatures certainly won’t make us change course,” Meloni wrote. “Unlike others, we are not puppets, we have no masters, and we take no orders.
“We have only one guiding principle: the interests of Italy,” she continued. “And we will continue to follow it with pride, regardless of what propagandists everywhere may say.”
On the late night hours of Tuesday, Ambassador Alexey Paramonov released a public statement through the Russian Embassy in Italy’s official Facebook page in which the diplomat claimed, “once again, Italian diplomats have missed the mark” by summoning him to the Italian Foreign Ministry on grounds Solovyov’s private remarks cannot be attributed to the Russian government.
According to the ambassador, no one in the Russian government has made disparaging remarks against Meloni or Italy, unlike “certain members of the Italian leadership,” who, he claimed, have made “extremely unfriendly comments” and comparisons against Russia and its government in the past.
“Judging by all appearances, the attempt to inflate this incident into an international and political scandal is the result of the work of anti-Russian forces within Italy’s deep state, linked to Ukraine,” the diplomat asserted, and claimed that there is a “clear attempt to sow discord” between Russia and Italy “perhaps to make up for their own foreign policy failures, including Zelensky’s recent unsuccessful visit to Rome.”