Today, Friday, the French Foreign Ministry summoned the Russian ambassador to Paris, Alexei Meshkov, after he posted on his Twitter account cartoons depicting Europeans in a situation subordinate to the United States, while the Italian judiciary is considering a complaint filed by the Russian embassy in Rome against a journalist who incited the killing of Putin.
The French Foreign Ministry said, "We are striving to maintain a necessary channel of dialogue with Russia," but this "behavior is totally inappropriate," referring to two cartoons, one of which shows Europeans crouching in front of Uncle Sam, who symbolizes the United States.
As for the second drawing, it shows sick Europe, lying on a bed, injected by two executioners, the United States and the European Union, with various substances in the name of “neo-Nazism”, “fear of Russia” and “Covid-19”.
The Russian embassy said that "the issue of the published tweet was raised, among other issues" on Friday morning.
"We have drawn the attention of our French colleagues about the provocations and acts of sabotage against the Russian diplomatic missions in France," she added.
For his part, the Russian ambassador in Rome, Friday, filed a complaint against the newspaper "La Stampa" after it published an editorial entitled "What if the assassination of Putin was the only way to end" the war in Ukraine?
In an article published on February 22, journalist and war correspondent Domenico Quirico wrote, "Since military intervention is unlikely and a diplomatic solution is ineffective, all that remains is to put forward the hypothesis of the Caesar's assassination by someone close to him."
He said that "the first plan of Biden, NATO and the Europeans is the following: that someone in Moscow assassinates Putin and frees us from this burden."
Filter and chaos
But the war correspondent, who was kidnapped twice in Libya in 2011 and in Syria in 2013, concludes, "Are we confident that the liquidation of the tyrant will not lead to worse chaos? We can only be pessimistic."
The Russian ambassador to Italy, Sergey Razov, filed a complaint with the Public Prosecutor's Office in Rome, accusing the journalist of inciting murder.
Upon his exit from the Palace of Justice, the diplomat denounced the article, saying that it "violates morals, morals and the rules of the profession of journalism."
As for La Stampa manager Massimo Giannini, he said they were "unfounded accusations".
He stressed his refusal to "receive lessons from those who process information in the way we know in their countries. It is not the Russian ambassador who can teach us the profession of journalism."
La Stampa has received the support of several political parties, and the Italian Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs, Benedetto della Vidova, defended "the freedom of Italian journalists to write and practice their profession".
"This is the essential difference between Italy, Europe, liberal democracies and Putin's Russia, where citizens are arrested just because they call a spade a spade," he wrote on his Twitter account.