“These Italian-made mines were defused by Russian sappers on Ukrainian territory and exhibited at an exhibition of captured weapons in Moscow’s ‘Patriot’ park in the summer of 2022,” the Russian embassy writes on Facebook, adding sarcastically: “How many of them ‘Souvenir from Italy’ Are they still on Ukrainian soil? People will suffer for a long time…”.
Moscow “lies knowing that it lies,” was Crosetto’s response, rejecting “deliberately misleading, untrue, and seriously derogatory information.” By accusing the Russian authorities of “Allusions and tendentious propaganda against our country, which has always complied with the rules of international law.” The defense minister exposed Moscow’s provocation, recalling that the bombs shown on social media “similar to Valsella/Tecnovar mines made in Italy, made from a variety of reasons cannot be Italian”.
First, because “the The production of landmines in Italy stopped more than 28 years ago with a moratorium by the Italian government and the subsequent law banning them definitively from our country’s accession, among the first to sign the Ottawa Treaty against anti-personnel mines”. Furthermore, “Italian-made anti-personnel mines were only exported until the early 1990s”, added Crosetto, who had already clashed with Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova over the past few days.
The photo of the “souvenir mines” is just the latest in a series of attacks Russia has launched against Italy via the social machinery of its diplomatic headquarters since the start of the invasion of Ukraine. Three days before the September elections, a series of photographs had been released showing President Vladimir Putin together with almost all Italian politicians, from Salvini to Conte, from Letta to Berlusconi. Before the Russian leader became a pariah. And then again the image of an armored car destroyed in Ukraine, according to Russians, an Italian lynx. Nothing but a fakebut in any case an attempt to divide Italian public opinion on whether or not to continue providing free military aid to Kyiv.