Italy summons Russian ambassador after TV propagandist calls Meloni ‘fascist scum’

Italy has summoned the Russian ambassador in Rome over a series of insults towards Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni made by TV propagandist Vladimir Solovyov, Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said on Tuesday.

Tajani said that the Italian government would “formally convey its protest against the extremely serious and offensive remarks made by the TV host”, which were delivered by Solovyov in Italian during a livestream of his popular radio show, Polnyy Kontakt.

Solovyov told his viewers that Meloni was a “disgrace to humanity”, “a patent idiot”, and “a nasty little woman”, and derogatorily referred to her as “Meloni the whore”. He then switched to Russian, calling her “fascist scum who betrayed her voters … and betrayed Trump”.

Meloni responded personally to the comments on Tuesday evening, saying in a post on X that “a zealous regime propagandist cannot lecture others on either consistency or freedom.”

Italian opposition politicians also roundly condemned Solovyov’s outburst, with the leader of the largest opposition party M5S, Giuseppe Conte, expressing his solidarity with Meloni over Solovyov’s “unspeakable and vulgar personal insults”.

In a statement on Telegram, Russian Ambassador Alexey Paramonov rejected the premise of the Italian Foreign Ministry’s summons, arguing that the words of a “popular Russian journalist, expressed on his private online channel” should not be interpreted as if they were an official statement from the Kremlin.

Instead, he claimed that the scandal was the “result of the actions of anti-Russian forces linked to Ukraine within the so-called Italian ‘deep state’”.

Solovyov has been one of the most popular pro-regime journalists in Russia for over two decades, as the presenter of the primetime current affairs talk show Evening with Vladimir Solovyov.

Using a trademark style characterised by personal insults, shouting, and hysteria, Solovyov plays a key role in Russia’s disinformation ecosystem, and is well connected in the Kremlin. A 2021 analysis by EUvsDisinfo documented 195 cases of pro-Kremlin disinformation originating in Solovyov's various programmes since 2015.

A series of investigations by Alexey Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) between 2017 and 2019 found that Solovyov owned two luxury villas near Lake Como in Italy, and had been granted permanent residency in the country. 

The properties, worth approximately €8 million, were seized by the Italian authorities following the invasion of Ukraine, and were subsequently vandalised in an arson attack.