2022-05-04 09:57:59
Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s interview to the Italian broadcaster Mediaset has caused a scandal in the country. Not for what was said, because the translation was poor and many things escaped from the Italian public. The debate erupted around the fact that the floor was given to someone who’s under personal sanctions.
Indeed, the shift in the media coverage has been dramatic over the past 8 weeks.
In March you would not hear a single discord with the mainstream narrative of the Russian ‘treacherous invasion’. Zelensky and Vereshyuk, Poroshenko and Arestovich were the usual suspects of the Italian talk shows along an array of Italian-speaking Ukrainians from Kiev and Lviv, Odessa and Mariupol. The Ukrainian participants were indisputably credible sources of the information on the ground. This is no longer the same.
The Italian private broadcast chains Mediaset and La7 have had leading Russian guest commentaries from Lavrov and Zakharova to Soloviev and Kiselyov. They are being taken with pinch of salt and even resentment, but they can and they do provide the Russian side of the story.
Even more astonishingly is the number of Italian commentators who have been questioning the line of the government. Topics ranging from the supply of arms to #Ukraine to manifestations of the country’s Nazi fractions, from gas embargo to the boomerang effect of the sanctions on European nations have become the focus of a heated domestic debate which spills out in the media.
And it isn’t obvious that the official narrative is winning. Rather on the contrary. The polls call for a negotiated solution with #Russia. Street protests speak out against dispatching weapons to the Ukrainian military. More and more intellectuals share the view of a joint responsibility between Russia and NATO/US for the crisis, appreciate that the arms’ supply will not help resolving it, but will prolong the economic spillover to Europe, consider negotiations as the only path. The public is no longer willing to listen to the Ukrainian fakes and lies, while paying for the skyrocketing electricity bills and checks in the supermarkets.
That’s why ‘the Empire strikes back’: the mainstream has decided to crack down on playing democracy and freedom of speech. Last week MPs filed a complaint to the broadcasting commission about Russian TV Zvezda’s journalist appearance on the Italian show, claiming her a propagandist. This week one of the most outspoken critics of the official narrative, Professor Alessandro Orsini, had his contract with LUISS University not continued (rather cancelled). The debate surrounding Mr Lavrov’s interview falls within this retaliatory trend.
We are yet to see a new turn in the fight for hearts and minds of the Europeans. They will not be given away easily.
@Russian_Monitor
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