COPY LINK

UKRAINE

Anti-war graffiti and fire reported at Russian TV presenter’s Italian villas

Vandals lit a small fire and dyed a swimming pool red on Wednesday at two luxury Lake Como villas owned by a pro-Putin propagandist, according to reports.

Published: 6 April 2022 16:31 CEST
Updated: 6 April 2022 18:00 CEST

Anti-war graffiti and fire reported at Russian TV presenter's Italian villas

Anti-war slogans and red paint were sprayed on the walls of a villa in Pianello del Lario, overlooking Lake Como, owned by TV presenter Vladimir Solovyev. Photo by STRINGER / ANSA / AFP

The wo vacation homes on Lake Como owned by Russian oligarch Vladimir Solovyev were targeted by vandals on Wednesday, according to reports.

The words “killer” and “no war” were sprayed onto the walls of one villa in Pianello del Lario, reportedly owned by Vladimir Solovyev, while the swimming pool overlooking Lake Como was coloured red, images from the Ansa news agency showed.

Italian authorities are also investigating a fire at another of Solovyev’s vacation homes in the nearby town of Menaggio.

Arson is suspected as tyres were used to start the fire, Ansa reported on Wednesday.

Anti-war slogans and red paint sprayed on the entrance to a villa in Pianello del Lario, overlooking Lake Como, owned by Vladimir Solovyev. Photo by STRINGER / ANSA / AFP

The villas, together worth some eight million euros according to the Italian government, are believed to be currently empty.

Solovyev, a prominent radio and television presenter, is considered the Kremlin’s most prolific and enthusiastic propagandist.

He has three villas in the area, all of which have been seized by Italian financial police as part of Western sanctions against those close to Putin.

Local fire chiefs played down the scale of the blaze after Italian media reported plumes of black smoke in the area.

“Just one team of firemen put out the fire within a very short time,” Como fire chief, Gennaro di Maio, told AFP.

“There is hardly any damage, it was burnt tyres that gave off visible black smoke,” he said.

Firefighters at one of two villas on Lake Como belonging to a Russian TV presenter linked to Putin. Photo: Vigili del Fuoco (Italian fire service)

Menaggio’s mayor, Michele Spaggiari, told Italy’s AGI news agency that the fire appeared to be “a demonstrative act” causing little or no damage.

Spaggiari said Solovyev bought the property about five years ago.

Solovyev owns two houses on Lake Como that are worth a combined eight million euros, the Italian government said as it announced the property seizures last month.

Police are investigating anti-Russian graffiti at the second property, Ansa reported.

The Italian government said on Monday that it has so far seized over 900 million euros worth of assets belonging to EU-sanctioned Russian oligarchs, including a 530-million-euro yacht.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the end of March urged the Italian government to continue the seizures and to stop the country from being a playground for Russia’s ultra-rich.

“Don’t be the place that welcomes these people,” Zelensky told lawmakers in Italy, which has long been a top holiday destination for Russia’s elite.

“We must freeze them all: freeze their properties, their accounts, their yachts,” he said.

Member comments

Become a Member to leave a comment.

The case of Ilaria Salis, 39, has been front-page news in Italy after she appeared in court in January handcuffed and chained, with her feet shackled.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni enjoys cordial relations with Hungary’s Viktor Orban but the case has caused bilateral tensions, with Rome making official complaints on behalf of Salis.

The teacher from Monza, near Milan, was arrested in Budapest in February last year.

Prosecutors allege Salis travelled to Budapest specifically to carry out the attacks against “unsuspecting victims identified as or perceived as far-right sympathisers” to deter “representatives of the far-right movement”.

She was charged with three counts of attempted assault and accused of being part of an extreme left-wing criminal organisation in the wake of a counter-demonstration against an annual neo-Nazi rally.

Salis denies the charges – which could see her jailed for up to 11 years – and claims that she is being persecuted for her political beliefs.

A defiant Salis told Italian newspaper La Stampa via her father in an interview published last week that she was “on the right side of history”.

On Friday, one of the victims and witnesses of one of the attacks are scheduled to testify, according to one of Salis’s Hungarian legal representatives.

Lawyer Gyorgy Magyar complained to AFP ahead of the trial that Salis has not yet received all the case documents in “her native language”.

“The translators promised to finish translating the documents in November, but until that (is done) she will not give any substantial testimony, and rightfully so,” he added.

Salis spent more than 15 months behind bars, but on Thursday was moved to house arrest on a 16 million forints (around 41,000 euros) bail, according to her father Roberto Salis.

Protesters in Milan hold a banner reading “Bring Ilaria Salis home” during a demonstration demanding Salis’s release from prison and against detention conditions in Hungary. (Photo by Piero CRUCIATTI / AFP)

She might be freed before any verdict is rendered on her case, if she is elected as a Member of the European Parliament.

Last month, the Italian Green and Left Alliance (AVS) nominated her as their lead candidate for the upcoming European elections.

If the party garners enough votes at the ballot, Salis might be eligible to access parliamentary immunity, leading to the suspension of the criminal proceedings against her.

Politicised case

The case of Ilaria Salis has been highly politicised, with the Hungarian government frequently commenting on it.

Salis’s father has accused the Hungarian authorities of double standards, claiming that they treated neo-Nazis, who allegedly assaulted anti-fascist activists around the same time, much more leniently.

“In this country, those people are considered patriots while anti-fascists are enemies of the state,” Roberto Salis told AFP.

He claims that his daughter was kept in inhumane prison conditions until January when her case received significant media coverage.

“For eight days, she was kept in a prison in a solitary cell, without being provided with toilet paper, sanitary towels, and soap.

“During that period, she would have needed the sanitary towels… in Italy, we would consider this torture,” Roberto Salis said.

The Council of Europe has criticised Hungary’s overcrowded prisons.

According to Eurostat, Hungary in 2022 recorded the highest prisoner rate per 100,000 people in the EU, followed by Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Hungarian officials have denied accusations of ill-treatment.

Prime Minister Orban’s nationalist government has repeatedly denounced the media for allegedly depicting Salis as a “martyr”, instead pointing to what it called the “brutality” of her alleged crimes.

“What we see here, in a quite outrageous case, is someone committing a brutal and public crime, and the European far-left is standing up for her and even trying to make her an MEP,” Orban’s chief of staff Gergely Gulyas said on Thursday.

“It is incompatible with everything we see as European values, human decency and the necessity of punishing crimes,” he added.

Salis’s father has complained that the Italian government has provided only “limited” help to his daughter.

Italy’s Ambassador to Hungary is expected to attend the trial on Friday, the embassy told AFP.