Putinism and Berlusconism

Abstract

When Berlusconi became Italian Prime Minister on June 11, 2001 (for the second time), Putin succeeded in establishing a—very—close personal relationship with the new Italian leader. He and his wife Lyudmila soon became welcome guests at Berlusconi’s summer residence in Porto Rotondo in Sardinia and Putin even sent in 2002 his two teenage daughters Misha and Katya there to spend their summer holidays. According to the local Sardinian newspaper La nuova Sardegna Putin felt so at ease in Sardinia that he bought in 2003 a €10-million property in Porto Cervo, a resort that is extremely popular among Russian billionaires. But Putin was prudent enough not to put the property in his own name.² Sharing holidays and the fact of being almost neighbors in the Italian island, strengthened their mutual bond. The personal chemistry between the two men was so excellent that Anna Politkovskaya, ironically, wrote that Berlusconi “appears to have fallen in love with Putin.”³ Berlusconi became in a sense Putin’s self-appointed ambassador in Europe and he “once went so far as to describe himself as Russia’s ‘advocate’ in the EU.”⁴ Berlusconi was even more than a simple “ambassador” or “advocate.” Nikolay Petrov of the Moscow Carnegie Center placed Berlusconi in Putin’s “inner circle” of his 12 most intimate partners.⁵

Let’s talk about football and women.¹

Silvio Berlusconi