Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said on Friday that the European Union should stand up for peace and try to convince Ukraine to accept Russian President Vladimir Putin’s demands to end the war.
“It is absolutely essential that we achieve peace as soon as possible, otherwise destruction and carnage will continue. I believe that Europe should unite to make a peace proposal to Putin and Ukrainians, trying Ukrainians accept Putin’s demands,” Berlusconi said. for the press in Naples, southern Italy.
The leader of the conservative Forza Italia party stressed that the sanctions imposed by the EU on Moscow “caused great damage to the Soviet economy”, as “gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to fall to 14%”, but also for European countries. Asked whether the EU should veto Russian gas purchases, Berlusconi said “this is an amazing hypothesis that will lead to the closure of hundreds of thousands of companies, the loss of 3 million jobs, increasing poverty in Italy.”
Finally, he claimed that ending the conflict in Ukraine suggests “putting Putin at the negotiating table and making no statements” heard from “Britain, NATO, etc.”, which, according to the businessman and politician, increases the tension.
A PUB • CONTINUE TO READ BELOW
Silvio Berlusconi already stated on May 16 during a rally of his party in the city of Trevigli that Italy “is at war because it supplies weapons to Ukraine.” The Berlusconi family owns the Mediaset group, which on May 1 published its first interview with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to a European publication.
The interview was criticized, including by Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, for Lavrov’s ability to make statements without a journalist’s questions and even compared Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to Adolf Hitler for his “Jewish origins.”
