Putin and Berlusconi: A Controversial Hunting Episode

Putin and Berlusconi, the raw hunting episode with the tsar and the Cav has not gone unnoticed. It was Fabrizio Cicchitto, the former group leader of the People of Freedom in the Chamber, who told the story. In the years when the Knight was close to the Russian president, often his guest in Sardinia and in his residences, it then happened that the leader of the former USSR - in great confidence with the Italian - invited him for a hunting trip together, during the vacation at a dacha of the founder of Forza Italia, invited to Russia. A story that dates back many years, to the early 2000s, and which, according to Cicchitto's account entrusted to Corriere della Sera, left Berlusconi quite dismayed. The story: 'Putin told me ‘Silvio, let's go hunting’. I thought ‘hunting? I've never touched a rifle’. But he insisted, so I accompanied him - was Berlusconi's account reported today by Cicchitto -. When we arrived in the forest he handed me a rifle and I got anxious. As we walked in the snow, Putin saw two deer and signaled me to aim at one. ‘That's yours. Shoot’. I made him understand that I would rather die than shoot. So he shot both of them and killed them’. Followed by the episode that dumbfounded the former Italian prime minister. ‘Putin looked at me satisfied and told me 'today I will offer you an extraordinary meal'. He went down the slope to go towards the animals, wielding a knife and he butchered a beast extracting its heart. Then he had a wooden tray brought to him by a man from the escort, he gave it to me and put that piece of bloody meat on it and told me ‘it will be an exceptional meal’. I was shocked. I hid behind a tree and vomited.