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WAR IN UKRAINE

Italy says Russia media ban cannot erase effects of ‘illegal war’

Italy on Tuesday condemned Russia for blocking access to dozens of European media outlets, saying it would not erase the effects of a "violent, devastating and illegal war" in Ukraine.

Published: 26 June 2024 08:46 CEST
Italy says Russia media ban cannot erase effects of 'illegal war'
Italian public broadcaster RAI was among dozens of European media outlets blocked in Russia this week. (Photo by Miguel MEDINA / AFP)

The foreign ministry described the ban as “unjustified”, saying the Italian outlets affected – the broadcasters RAI and La7 and newspapers La Repubblica and La Stampa – had “always provided objective and impartial information on the Ukraine conflict”.

It said Russia’s attacks in Ukraine against civilians, cities and the energy network “will not be erased by the bans imposed on media and journalists in Italy and around the world who continue to follow devastating and inhumane activities with professionalism and independence”.

READ ALSO: Italy warns against ‘rash’ moves over arms to Ukraine

“The decision of the Russian Federation is one that does not remove or lessen the effects of a violent, devastating and illegal war,” it said.

Italy this year holds the rotating presidency of the G7 group of wealthy nations.

Russia said on Tuesday that it was blocking access to dozens of European media outlets, including AFP websites, in response to an EU broadcasting bans on several Russian outlets imposed last month.

The announcement comes after the European Union unveiled a ban on four Kremlin-controlled media outlets in May, accusing them of being “instrumental in bringing forward and supporting” Moscow’s Ukraine offensive.

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POLITICS

Italy’s Meloni breaks silence on youth wing’s fascist comments

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on Friday condemned offensive comments made by members of her far-right party's youth wing to an undercover journalist, breaking weeks of silence over the scandal.

Published: 28 June 2024 16:19 CEST
Italy's Meloni breaks silence on youth wing's fascist comments

The investigation published this month by Italian news website Fanpage included video of members of the National Youth, the junior wing of Brothers of Italy, which has post-fascist roots, showing support for Nazism and fascism.

In images secretly filmed by an undercover journalist in Rome, the members are seen performing fascist salutes, chanting the Nazi “Sieg Heil” greeting and shouting “Duce” in support of the late Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.

Opposition parties have been calling on Meloni to denounce the behaviour since the first part of the investigation aired on June 13.

Those calls intensified after a second part was published this week with fresh highly offensive comments directed at Jewish people and people of colour.

READ ALSO: Italy’s ruling party shrugs off youth wing’s Fascist salutes

Party youths in particular mocked Ester Mieli, a Brothers of Italy senator and a former spokeswoman for Rome’s Jewish community.

“Whoever expresses racist, anti-Semitic or nostalgic ideas are in the wrong place, because these ideas are incompatible with Brothers of Italy,” Meloni told reporters in Brussels.

“There is no ambiguity from my end on the issue,” she said.

Two officials from the movement have stepped down over the investigation, which also caught one youth party member calling for the leader of the centre-left Democratic Party (PD), Elly Schlein, to be “impaled”.

But Meloni also told off journalists for filming young people making offensive comments directed at Jewish people and people of colour, saying they were “methods… of an (authoritarian) regime”.

Fanpage responded that it was “undercover journalism”.

Meloni was a teenage activist with the youth wing of the Italian Social Movement (MSI), formed by Mussolini supporters after World War II.

Brothers of Italy traces its roots to the MSI.

The most right-wing leader to take office since 1945, Meloni has sought to distance herself from her party’s legacy without entirely renouncing it. She kept the party’s tricolour flame logo – which was also used by MSI and inspired France’s Jean-Marie Le Pen when he created the far-right National Front party in 1972.

The logo’s base, some analysts say, represents Mussolini’s tomb, which tens of thousands of people visit every year.

Several high-ranking officials in the party do not shy away from their admiration of the fascist regime, which imposed anti-Semitic laws in 1938.

Brothers of Italy co-founder and Senate president Ignazio La Russa collects Mussolini statues.

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