Several seats remained empty in the Italian House of Representatives in Rome on Tuesday when Volodymyr Zelenskyj spoke.

The group "L'Alternativa c'è" (There is an alternative) boycotted the speech of the Ukrainian president.

The reason given in a statement on Monday was: “Showing solidarity with a sovereign state does not mean listening to propaganda and warmongering, such as calls for a no-fly zone to be imposed or for troops to be sent to unite Italy and Europe in a global one The parliamentary group consists of former members of the left-wing populist Five Star Movement who have left the party or been expelled from it in recent years for various reasons.

Matthias Rub

Political correspondent for Italy, the Vatican, Albania and Malta based in Rome.

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But some right-wing populists also stayed away from the joint session of the two chambers of parliament.

One shouldn't just listen to one war party, they said, after Zelenskyj, Russian President Vladimir Putin should have had a chance to speak.

Former Interior Minister Matteo Salvini from the right-wing national Lega had called for all members of parliament and senators in his party to participate.

But by no means everyone wanted to submit to party discipline.

Both the Lega and the Five Star Movement belong to the broad coalition led by Prime Minister Mario Draghi.

“Mariupol is to Ukrainians what Genoa is to Italians”

On the other hand, there were no politically motivated absences from the ranks of the post-fascist opposition party “Brothers of Italy” under Giorgia Meloni, who according to polls is currently the strongest political force with 21 percent approval.

Meloni had made a kind of Atlantic turn immediately after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, unequivocally siding with Ukraine, the EU and the US.

In his short speech to the Italian parliamentarians, Zelenskyy warned that Putin sees Ukraine as a "gateway to Europe".

Ukraine is in danger of not surviving the invasion.

The besieged and largely destroyed port city of Mariupol on the Black Sea is to the Ukrainians what Genoa is to the Italians.

"We must not allow barbarism," demanded Zelenskyj, who received a standing ovation for his speech.

In his short reply, Prime Minister Mario Draghi pledged further support for Ukraine in its fight against the invaders and in its efforts to join the EU.

The country's resistance to the Russian attack was heroic, Draghi said: "The arrogance of the Russian government collides with the dignity of the Ukrainian people."

However, the "boycotters" of the special session of the two chambers of parliament can rightly argue that it is not they themselves who have gone astray in their Russia policy, but the leadership of their respective parties.

The Five Star Movement has been the governing party without interruption since the parliamentary elections of March 2018 - first in a coalition with the right-wing national Lega and then with the Social Democrats, each under Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, and finally in the coalition under Draghi since February 2021.

During Conte's reign there was no lack of testimonies of friendship towards Moscow.

During his state visit in June 2019, Putin was received with military honors by President Sergio Mattarella at the Quirinal Palace.

He then met Prime Minister Conte and his then deputies Salvini from the Lega and Luigi Di Maio from the Five Star Movement, who praised him in high tones.

Salvini had previously described Russia's annexation of Crimea as "liberation" and posed in Red Square in a T-shirt with Putin's portrait printed on it.

Corona help with espionage intent?

Exactly two years ago, Russian military vehicles with the inscription "Dalla Russia con amore" (From Russia with love) drove unaccompanied and under surveillance from a military airport near Rome to Bergamo.

At the time, Moscow exploited the operation with a manageable effect in fighting the pandemic in the particularly affected northern Italian region of Lombardy for propaganda purposes.

In addition, important information about Italy's health, defense and civil protection systems may have been obtained.

To this day it is unclear what agreements Moscow and Rome made at the time for the "humanitarian deployment" of Russian troops in Italy.

It is also unclear which troops from Russia were involved in Italy in spring 2020.

Some suspect that there were also espionage units among them.

The social-democratic mayor of Bergamo, Giorgio Gori, recently recalled that the Russian "auxiliary delegation" included more generals and officers than doctors and nurses.

“Was that action help, propaganda or espionage?” is not the only question that the mayor of Bergamo is asking himself today.