“Vladimir showed me a violent nature that I did not imagine in such a good and rational man,” Fabrizio Cicchitto, a former senator from the Forza Italia party, recalls Berlusconi telling him immediately after he returned from Russia.
According to Cicchitto, Berlusconi accepted Putin’s offer to go hunting, even though he had never laid hands on a rifle. Once in the forest, the Russian president handed Berlusconi a rifle and they walked together through the snow.
When Putin spotted two deer, he urged Berlusconi to take aim.
“That’s yours. Shoot,” Putin told Berlusconi, according to Cicchitto.
When Berlusconi refused, Putin shot both deer and gave him a satisfied look. Putin then walked down the slope, holding a knife. He butchered the animal and removed its heart.
He then had a man in his entourage give Berlusconi a wooden tray on which he placed the piece of bleeding meat, saying it would be an exceptional meal.
Berlusconi then hid behind a tree to vomit.
The former prime minister, however, defended his Russian friend. “Maybe it’s just a habit of hunters,” Cicchitto remembers Berlusconi saying.
Silvio Berlusconi, who died on June 12, 2023, aged 86, was a personal friend of Vladimir Putin and always defended him, even after the invasion of Ukraine. Moreover, after the death of the Italian politician, Putin lamented the “irreparable” loss of a “true friend”.
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Tags: gesture Vladimir Putin hunting game Silvio Berlusconi heart deer
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