Putin and Berlusconi: A Strongman Love Story

The Geneva summit between American President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin sparks reflection on a longstanding component of Putin’s foreign policy with the West: his cultivation of relationships with autocrat-friendly leaders of democracies. These partners promote his interests and justify his imperialist aggressions.

Putin’s close relationship with former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi provides a prime example. He sought to erode his country’s democracy and developed an autocratic style of governance. Shaking off conflicts of interest, considering himself above the law, Berlusconi privileged his private business interests over national ones when conducting international affairs.

Putin started the courtship, using his experience as a KGB case officer charged with grooming collaborators. In 2001, when Newsweek Moscow bureau chief Christian Caryl asked the new president what intelligence skills he found useful as a politician, Putin mentioned the art of creating “a dialogue, a contact; you have to activate everything that is the best in your partner.” In the early 2000s, when Russia desired full membership in NATO and wanted foreign lenders to write off crippling loans, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and American President George W. Bush had been his targets.

Journalist Elena Tregubova recalled Putin’s talent at mirroring his foreign interlocutors to create a sense of kinship. It worked on Bush, who came away from a 2001 summit in Slovenia feeling that Putin was “very straightforward and trustworthy ... I was able to get a sense of his soul.” 

Helping Putin cultivate Bush dovetailed with Berlusconi’s own ambitions of becoming a power broker of Euro-Atlantic foreign policy. In May 2002, Berlusconi arranged a summit between Bush and Putin at the Italian military base Pratica di Mare to symbolize the end of the Cold War. To create a spectacular setting, Berlusconi used designers from his television networks and borrowed Roman statues from Italy’s archeological museums. Putin likely appreciated the NATO-Russia Council that came out of the summit even more.

Having proved his worth, Berlusconi became Putin’s favorite foreign leader. Over the next years, the two men broke a record for bilateral visits, and frequently vacationed together, wearing similar clothes.

Berlusconi and Putin, Zavidovo, Russia, February 2003. Viktor Korotayev/AFP/Getty Images. .

Italian politician and fluent Russian speaker Valentino Valentini, who U.S. Ambassador to Italy David H. Thorne would characterize as Berlusconi’s “unofficial intermediary/bagman,” was always present as a translator, allowing the men to keep their dealings private. While Berlusconi denied he had business dealings in Russia, Valentini traveled frequently to Russia on his behalf, a practice that continued during the two-year period (May 2006-May 2008) Berlusconi was out of office.

By the start of Berlusconi’s third term in office (2008-2011), though, the dynamic between the two leaders had changed. Putin then served as prime minister, having completed his maximum two terms as president, but continued to call the shots. Heightened Russian imperialism abroad and repression at home required Berlusconi to take more extreme positions to defend Putin, which put their relationship under new scrutiny. When Russia bombed military and civilian targets in Georgia that year in support of actions by separatists in South Ossetia., Berlusconi blamed the U.S., not Russia, for inflaming regional conflict.

A few months later, when the Russian journalist Natalia Melikova brought up a taboo subject (Putin’s relationship with the former Olympic gymnast Alina Kabaeva) during a Putin-Berlusconi press conference, the Italian leader mimicked shooting Melikova, knowing that the investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya had been shot to death less than two years earlier.

Berlusconi mimics shooting Melikova, Porto Rotondo, Italy, 2008, while Putin smiles.

Reports filed in 2008-2009 by the U.S. Ambassador to Italy, Ronald Spogli, warned that Berlusconi had become a “mouthpiece” of the Russian leader, regularly voicing “opinions and declarations that have been passed to him directly by Putin.” Moreover, Berlusconi and Valentini now handled Russia affairs personally, excluding the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as they pursued “a foreign policy designed to deny Russia nothing.”

Spogli suspected that a “nefarious connection”  accounted for the secrecy. The Italian leader may have been profiting from deals between the Italian and Russian energy companies ENI and Gazprom, he wrote, in exchange for supporting Russian efforts to “dilute American security interests in Europe.”

When a 2010 Wikileaks document dump made Spogli’s memos public, the Italian Parliament launched an investigation. It suggested that Berlusconi was poised to make a percentage of profits from an ENI-Gazprom South Stream pipeline to be built under the Black Sea. By the time construction on the pipeline began in 2012 (it was canceled due to EU objections in 2014), sex and corruption scandals and the eurozone crisis had driven Berlusconi from office. Putin, of course, had returned to the presidency and was more powerful than ever, and likely richer too from the pipeline deal.

We still don’t know the full story of Putin and Berlusconi’s back-door financial dealings. The two remained close even when the latter was banned for running for office until 2018 as part of his convictions for tax fraud, sex with a minor, wiretapping, and bribery. “You should not stop saying hello to a person if he [Berlusconi] is no longer a decision maker,” Putin told the journalist Alan Friedman in 2014-2015.

Berlusconi, for his part, made sure visitors to his home, from sex workers to George Clooney, were shown “Putin’s bed” -- a gift from the Russian leader. It was a symbol of the intimacy of their friendship, and in 2017 Berlusconi evoked the good old days by giving Putin a duvet cover adorned with their faces. But Putin no longer needed him. He had a far more powerful head of state to promote his agendas, someone who surpassed even Berlusconi in his loyalty and eagerness to please.

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References:

Putin to Christian Caryl in Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy, Mr. Putin. Operative in the Kremlin (Washington, D.C., 2013), 166-167.

Elena Tregubova, in Michael Gorham, ‘Putin’s Language,” in Helena Goscilo, ed., Putin as Celebrity and Cultural Icon (New York, 2013), 83.

Putin quote about Berlusconi and the Pratica di Mare summit in Alan Friedman, My Way. Berlusconi In His Own Words (London, 2015).