The silence of the reckless regarding Putin’s bombs

Spasibo: what else? It has been four days since a Russian-made drone was found on a Polish Baltic beach, carrying a warhead. It has been three days since the menacing drone was neutralised by two Italian fighter jets acting on behalf of NATO, over Lithuanian airspace, on the day of the visit by the Italian Defence Minister, Guido Crosetto. It has been five days since the attack on a rail convoy on the border between Poland and Russia. It has been seven days since another drone flew close to the aircraft in which Zelensky was travelling. Seven days have passed since two Russian drones were spotted in Moldovan airspace. Just over ten days have passed since the drone, containing professional-grade explosives and a detonator, found at NATO’s logistics hub in Leipzig was attributed to Russia. It is evident: for days, weeks and months, Russia has been attempting to test Europe’s defences, as well as those of NATO and Ukraine, and for weeks now, Russian explosives have tended, in the eyes of a section of the public, to attract less attention than that garnered daily by an explosive far less threatening than the Russian one – such as the affectionate one sent by Valter Lavitola to Sigfrido Ranucci. The section of public opinion that has remained most indifferent in recent weeks to the explosive devices that Russia has, with little love, brought close to European and NATO territory is the one that feeds daily on the sources of certain political parties – Vannacci’s camp, Salvini’s camp, the M5S camp – with their media entourage in tow. All these factions are ready to spring to attention, ‘yes sir’, when Europe promises greater coordination against the Russian threat, when NATO calls for greater investment in security, and when governments send defence systems to Ukraine. The more time passes, the more these factions find themselves, in the face of Putin’s threat, as if standing before a mirror that reveals their own hypocrisy. (continued on page four)

They describe themselves as anti-fascists, yet when confronted with contemporary forms of fascism they advocate surrender, arguing that provoked fascists can become dangerous. They claim to be champions of freedom, they say, but when faced with the new European partisans, they call for disarmament and desertion, forgetting the great lesson – as a true partisan of the Constitution – from Sergio Mattarella, who on 25 April a few years ago drew a parallel between the Italian and Ukrainian resistance movements: “A people taking up arms to assert their right to peace after the war waged by the fascist regime.” They are sovereigntists, they say, but they do not defend the sovereignty of a country under attack. They are ready to take to the streets against rearmament, they say, but only against European rearmament, not against Putin’s. They are in favour of self-defence, which is always legitimate, but only when self-defence concerns a jeweller, not when it concerns an entire country. They are in favour of arming all Italians, with ever greater freedom to bear arms, if possible, but they are not in favour of defending Europeans threatened by the weapons of foreign powers. They are in favour of bringing military experience into politics, but they refuse to regard threats to European armies as threats worthy of being treated as a top priority.

They claim to be defenders of due process in Italy, yet they turn every suspicion against Zelensky into evidence that need not be proven. In Italy, they act like punitive zealots – no evidence is needed; a mere suspicion is enough to convict you – yet they are then quick to apply the strictest due process principles to Putin, considering him innocent until proven guilty of all the crimes he has committed, even going so far, as the editor of a well-known newspaper did, as to label Putin a ‘criminal responsible’. They are extremely keen to denounce Europe’s alleged interference during elections, yet they are particularly reluctant to highlight Russia’s confirmed interference in European elections, such as in Romania. In politics, they champion the so-called values of patriotism, yet they manoeuvre on the political chessboard as if their priority were to defend a homeland other than their own – which often coincides with beloved Mother Russia.

While Russia has been provoking and threatening Europe on its borders, listen to what our heroes have been saying over the last few days. Salvini: “It seems to me there is an anti-Russian anxiety that worries me”. Vannacci, when asked about the drones attributed to Moscow: “A great many of these accusations are completely unfounded”. Conte: Russian interference is a “warning raised rather hastily”. All of this was then neatly summarised by Marco Travaglio in Il Fatto Quotidiano yesterday, who claims that it is Europe that is threatening peace (in 2022, Travaglio argued that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was an American fabrication), and who claims that it is the West that is provoking Putin (Putin has increased the share of GDP allocated to rearmament to 8 per cent, but if Putin rearms, that’s fine; if Europe does it, it isn’t: slurp!) and according to whom Europe is wrong to seek a way to defend itself because a war that cannot be won should not even be fought (and so if Putin wants to carry out further raids in the future, no problem at all – come on, because he’s a criminal, but he’s a gentleman, he’s responsible, let’s just let him get on with it: slurp!).

One might, in a utopian sense, hope that Lavitola’s ‘bombs of love’ might stir up a section of Italian public opinion, albeit less so than Putin’s ‘love-less’ bombs. But in the face of indifference towards the threats posed by Russia at Europe’s borders, the mirror known as Putin does have one redeeming feature: those who choose to wave the white flag, Those who choose to fan the flames of the desertion party, those who choose to turn a blind eye to runaway drones – even when these might have struck a minister in their own government – do not do so out of consistency; they do so by choice, because when faced with the choice of which side to take – between a Europe that defends itself and the enemies of Europe who are rearming – they have chosen which side to take. Harsh on the anti-fascists of yesteryear, lenient towards today’s fascisms, which threaten a precious asset called freedom. Harsh on migrants at the borders, but not on the dictators who threaten a precious frontier called democracy. Spasibo: what else? Slurp.