by Fiorenza Sarzanini
After the arrival of medical aid in March 2020, Palazzo Chigi organized a meeting with the Russian military delegation, who proposed to disinfect the entire Italian territory based on a highlevel political agreement. But the cancellation was clear
In March 2020, a confidential meeting between Russians and Italians took place in the midst of an emergency due to the Covid19 pandemic. Two days after arriving in Rome which took place two years ago on the evening of March 22 the hitherto kept secret meeting had the delegation led by General Sergey Kikot, deputy commander of the Department of Chemical, Radiological and Biological Defense, as protagonists of the Russian army and the Italians who were dealing with the health crisis at the time. In a guest house of the Defense Ministry, the soldiers arriving from Moscow met General Luciano Portolano, the then commander of the Coi, the Joint Task Force, and the heads of the Scientific and Technical Committee, Agostino Miozzo and Fabio Ciciliano.
On the agenda are the activities that the Russian contingent could conduct in our country. And on this occasion, Kikot’s request was explicit: sanitize all Italian territory, also entering public offices and all vulnerable places. In the face of opposition from the Italian delegation, Kikot made it even clearer: we are here on the basis of a political agreement at the highest level. So we can do anything to help you.
The refusal on that occasion was clear, after hours of conversations, Portolano and Miozzo clarified that the only interventions would have to concern hospitals and Rsa, senior residences where there have already been dozens of deaths due to coronavirus. But what the Russians achieved next remains a mystery. This is the latest background to the mission that is causing so much controversy after the statements of Alexei Vladimorovic Paramonov, 60, former Russian consul in Milan, director of the European Department of the Foreign Ministry, who has threatened irreversible consequences New plan sanctions against Moscow after the invasion decided to go to Ukraine.
The ContePutin Agreement
It was Palazzo Chigi who organized the meeting. The day before the Russians arrived in Rome, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte had a telephone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin. On March 22, thirteen Ilyushin quadractors and 104 people landed at Pratica di Mare military airport near Rome. The mission, agreed to help Italy through the pandemic, included 28 doctors and four nurses. The others were military. In addition to Kikot, Natalia Y. Pshenichnaya, Deputy Director of the Central Institute for Epidemiological Research, and Aleksandr V. Semenov from the Pasteur Institute in St. Petersburg were present. Both employees of the Rospotrebnadzor, the civilian health facility that Putin entrusted with overseeing the fight against the epidemic on January 27, 2020.
We enter the public buildings
Miozzo and Ciciliano were asked to participate as CTS managers in order to plan the interventions accurately. Miozzo remembers the trial well: Kikot’s debut was particularly pushy, gruff. He spoke as if they had to clean up Chernobyl after the nuclear explosion. He told us that the highlevel agreements call for disinfection throughout the area and that they intend to disinfect all buildings, including public ones. We decided to break off the talks. With Portolano we decided not to back down and communicated our position at the end of the afternoon. It was later confirmed to us that they had rehabilitated many roads.
agreements with hospitals
What happened next is only partially known. The Russians arrived in Lombardy and stayed for two months. They worked with health facilities with free access to the wards. A few months later, the New Yorker wrote that the DNA of a Russian citizen who tested positive in Italy had been processed for Sputnik research. A year later, in April 2021, despite the EMA’s refusal to approve the Russian vaccine, an agreement was reached with the Spallanzani Hospital in Rome precisely for the Sputnik experiment. Cooperation ended a few days ago, three weeks after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“Sensitive data
What was the toplevel political agreement that Kikot had otherwise? And most importantly, what health information did the Russians have access to? Basic circumstances that must be established at this moment of international conflict, also to find out whether as feared the threat of Alexei Vladimorovic Paramonov concerns the disclosure of the pacts signed at the time.
March 21, 2022 (change March 21, 2022 | 20:13)
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