“Unsuspecting Italian people have been corrupted by Russia.” This is what the Minister of Defense, Guido Crosetto, states in Bruno Vespa’s new book “Finimondo”, raising an alarm on the role of Moscow’s interference in Italy and Europe. According to the head of Defense, Russia has already started a “cognitive and hybrid aggression” against our country. “Without even us, as normal citizens, realizing it – explains Crosetto – its propaganda has entered the brain and cultural formation of many people, directing it through a sophisticated use of social media and other information tools, with scientific infiltration and also with the classic infiltration of corruption”.
Crosetto defines Italy as “the main European country that our enemies want to destabilize”. “We are the only stable nation in Europe and for this very reason we are the main objective. In terms of infiltration by hostile powers, anything can happen here”, adds the minister in Vespa’s book, underlining the “great Russian school” in the techniques of disinformation and manipulation of public opinion.
In the volume, Crosetto also connects the theme of infiltration to internal divisions on the foreign policy front. “No EU country has decided to close the export of arms like Italy. No nation has helped Palestine like ours. Yet in no country has there been the controversies that we have had. We have been the country with the strongest reactions, demonstrations and aggressions. No Landini is capable of doing this alone. There is a formidable infiltration which tends to destabilize the only truly stable European country thanks to the Meloni government”.
After the advance release of his statements, Crosetto spoke on
The minister then recalled the case of the former officer Walter Biot, sentenced to 29 years for selling documents covered by military secrecy to Moscow, as a concrete example of Russian infiltration in the country.
In the dialogue with Vespa, Crosetto also addresses the issue of the conflict in Ukraine, showing a dark realism about the prospects for peace. “Reconquering the territories lost in 2014 and after February 2022 is today considered impossible by everyone. Russia will never cede them and Ukraine will not have the strength to reconquer them on its own, even with our help. Putin cannot go back, also because he changed the Constitution making the occupied territories ‘Russian’ in all respects”. When asked if former US president Donald Trump could support an agreement based on the cession of territories, Crosetto replies: “The first hypothesis made by the president of the United States is to talk about cessions…”. But, he adds, “it is up to them alone to decide whether the greatest sacrifice is the cession of territories or the continuation of a bloody war that could get worse.” The minister concludes with a dramatic assessment of the conflict: “The Ukrainian dead are 520 thousand, the Russian dead are more than one million. The difference is that the Ukrainians know their losses, the Russian people have no idea.”