(Adnkronos) – In meeting with Russia’s envoy on Wednesday, foreign minister Antonio Tajani said that a slew of insults levelled at premier Giorgia Meloni by a prominent Russian TV presenter were “absolutely unacceptable,” the minister told reporters in Rome.
“Vulgar, sexist insults directed at the Prime Minister are absolutely unacceptable,” Tajani said on the sidelines of the Italy-Poland strategic forum.
Tajani told Russia’s ambassador Alexey Paramonov that it was unconscionable that presenter Vladimir Solovy’s insults directed at Meloni were aired on public broadcaster Russia 1.
“We told him that it is unacceptable for a commentator on Russia 1, which is the state-run television channel, to use vulgar, unacceptable language towards the premier of a free and democratic state such as Italy,” Tajani stated.
In social media posts on Tuesday, Paramonov denied any Russian government responsibility for the insults to Meloni made by Solovy and said the foreign minstry had “once again made a blunder” in summoning him to the foreign ministry.
“Giorgia Meloni is a legitimate head of government, supported by popular consensus, she has led the Italian executive for almost four years and, throughout this time, no representative of the Russian authorities has ever expressed offensive judgments towards her or Italy,” Paramonov wrote.
Speaking in Italian and Russian on his on his Polnyj Kontakt programme Solovy called Meloni “whore”, “fascist scumbag”, “shame of the human race”, “certified idiot”, “beast”, “ugly little woman” and “betrayer” – of Italian voters and US president Donald Trump, whose war planes were denied permession to launch attacks on Iran from a strategically located air base in Sicily.
In a post on X Tuesday, Meloni appeared to shrug off Solovy’s insults towards her, calling him “a diligent regime propagandist”.
“A diligent regime propagandist cannot give lessons in either consistency or freedom. But these caricatures certainly won’t make us change course,” Meloni wrote.
“We, unlike others, have no strings, no masters, and take no orders,” she went on.
