A diplomatic scandal erupts over Solovyov's words about Italian Prime Minister Meloni

Insulting statements by TV presenter Vladimir Solovyov addressed to Italian Prime Minister Giorgi Meloni led to a diplomatic scandal. Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani announced the summoning of Russian Ambassador to Rome Alexei Paramonov. Today, on April 22, the Russian diplomat gave a comment in which he saw the actions of anti-Russian forces in the current situation.

Solovyov's statements were made on April 16 on the air of the program "Full Contact" on the channel "Solovyov Live", but they were widely publicized later. The Italian media wrote that the Russian journalist called Meloni a "fascist" and a "certified idiot," and also accused her of betraying her constituents. The head of the Italian Foreign Ministry and Deputy Prime Minister Antonio Tajani wrote on April 21 in the social network X that he had summoned Paramonov "to express an official protest in connection with the offensive statements of the TV presenter."

The Russian diplomatic mission distributed Paramonov's comment, where he notes that "once again Italian diplomats "hit the post" with his summons to the Italian Foreign Ministry to make claims in connection with alleged attacks from Moscow on the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Italy, Giorgio Meloni."

"It is hardly possible to attribute to the generally accepted in diplomatic practice the current reason for summoning to the Foreign Ministry — the words of a well-known Russian journalist, even a very talented and popular one, heard on his own private online channel. It would never have occurred to any sane person to perceive purely personal emotional private assessments of anyone as an official statement of the government of a particular state," the document says.

Paramonov pointed out that Russia "has never used statements by Italian showmen, bloggers, journalists against the country and its leadership as a pretext for diplomatic demarches or defamatory anti-Italian campaigns."

As the Russian ambassador stressed, the attempt to attribute the vocabulary used in the purely author's commentary to the Russian leadership and people and to inflate an international and political scandal out of this case "is a consequence of the work of anti-Russian forces inside the Italian deep state associated with Ukraine."

"There is an obvious attempt to embroil the peoples of Russia and Italy, weaken our diplomatic contacts, cause additional image damage to Russia, possibly in order to recoup for their own foreign policy failures, including for Zelensky's last unsuccessful visit to Rome," Paramonov said.

He also sees an attempt to stop the expansion of the Italians' front, which advocates the speedy normalization of bilateral relations and the restoration of full-fledged economic and cultural cooperation between Russia and Italy.

The diplomat recalled that during the entire time Meloni was in power, none of the Russian leadership expressed derogatory judgments either to her or to Italy.

"Unlike some members of the Italian leadership, who from time to time make extremely unfriendly comments and comparisons to both the Russian leadership and The Russian Federation as a whole," he added.

Meloni herself, without naming Solovyov directly, told the Italian media that "a diligent propagandist of the regime cannot give lessons either in consistency or in freedom."