Yesterday, Friday March 19, the Threats from the Kremlin to Italy. The “irreversible consequences” if we approve new sanctions (the reference refers to gas that would be cut), the insults of the “hawk” Lorenzo Guerini and then the references to Covid. “You asked us for help at the time of the pandemic and now you are taking sides against us,” the Kremlin’s allusive message read. And the hint was all on the mysterious operation of the Russians in Italy in March 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic. A story that will be remembered by many and to which La Stampa returns with an exciting background.
The newspaper recalls how “at seven o’clock in the evening on Friday, April 3, 2020, the Russian general Igor Konashenkov a man who is now one of the four Russians responsible for managing the invasion of Ukraine, along with Wladimir Putinto the Secretary of Defense Sergei Shoiguto the head of the armed forces Valery Gerasimov published a post on the Moscow Ministry of Defense website about the hard attack on La Stampa: “And why?” La Stampa had reported some facts in a series of inquiries based on many concurrent political and military sources. One that the socalled Russian aid mission to Italy for Covid was handled directly by Vladimir Putin Giuseppe Conte. On Saturday, March 21, 2020, there was a phone call between the then Italian Prime Minister and the President of Russia,” the daily recalls.
This aid, which would have proved almost entirely useless had it arrived by Russian military expedition, landed on gigantic military cargo planes Pratica di Mare “with security screening (goods only),” emphasizes La Stampa. And again: “On the planes were 22 military trucks and 120 Russian military doctors, specialists in biological warfare, some from theaters of war”. The newspaper directed by Massimo Giannini remember how “the leader of the mission was Sergei Kikotalready in the war in Syria for Russia, the general to whom Russia entrusted the defense Bashar alAssad to the court case”.
The Kremlin called the operation “From Russia with love”. And here La Stampa places the charge for the 1990s, recalling how “several highlevel sources presented it to us as a propaganda move, with the parade (never happened before in a NATO country) of military trucks and Russian flags for six hundred kilometers from Rome to Bergamo and with very serious possibility of an intelligence operation, multiple sources said on record. Many of the soldiers who arrived belonged to the GRU, Moscow’s military intelligence service.” In short, Vladimir Putin saw the pandemic as an opportunity to infiltrate Italy. The intelligence operation’s humanitarian intervention may have leaked key information to the Russians, as if they wanted us in the threats remember the night before…