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The Kremlin’s Pull on Italy’s ‘Sovereigntists’
Live from Ukraine 🇺🇦
Ivano-Frankivsk — What we have been reporting from Ukraine for years is a war that the kremlin is also waging inside European societies. The political aim is to make support for the victim of aggression ever harder, fueling divisions and turning fatigue into a willingness to accept the aggressor’s terms. As in many other countries, in Italy too the fear of russian interference is therefore a concrete question of sovereignty: the ability to decide one’s own foreign policy while knowing the interests, relationships and resources that help shape public debate. An ability that could be put to a hard test precisely by the political forces that call themselves ‘sovereigntist’.
On July 9, 2026, Italy’s Foreign Ministry announced the expulsion of two military attachés of the russian embassy, Ivan Gorbachev and Mikhail Astakhov, after illegal activities uncovered thanks to a tip-off from AISI, Italy’s domestic intelligence agency. The ministry called them a serious and unacceptable interference with national security and Italian institutions, showing in practice that the Italian State has already had to respond to hostile russian activity on its own territory.
The European picture is just as explicit. On October 8, the EU Council extended for one year its measures against russia’s…
