ROME: The spectrum of Italy’s political class has condemned a group of protesters who Friday vandalized the main office of Turin-based newspaper La Stampa.
The condemnations came from far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, the head of the main center-left opposition party Elly Schlein, as well as from the non-political President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella.
This is a “very serious act which deserves the strongest condemnation,” Meloni said in a statement Friday, after phoning the editor-in-chief of the paper, Andrea Malaguti, and adding that “freedom of the press and information is a precious good.”
Mattarella on Saturday condemned a “violent attack,” while Schlein, quoted by La Stampa, called it a “serious and unacceptable act” and said that “every newsroom is a bastion of freedom and democracy.”
According to the daily’s website, around a hundred people participating in a demonstration in Turin against the government’s budget plans broke away from the main march and forced their way into the newspaper’s offices, which were empty that day due to a nationwide strike by Italian journalists.
“Shouting ‘Terrorist journalists, you’re number one on the list!’, they stormed the newsroom and tore up valuable books and documents that we use daily for our work,” the paper said.
Photos showed the walls of the newsroom covered in graffiti such as “Free Palestine” and “Newspapers complicit with Israel.”
An AFP reporter also saw that they hung a banner saying “Free Shahin,” referring to the imam of a Turin mosque who is facing deportation.
Italian politicians back newspaper after vandal attack
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Italian politicians back newspaper after vandal attack
- Photos showed the walls of the newsroom covered in graffiti such as “Free Palestine” and “Newspapers complicit with Israel”
Putin says developing Russia’s nuclear forces ‘absolute priority’
- Putin vowed to keep “strengthening the army and navy” and draw on military experience from the nearly four-year conflict in Ukraine
MOSCOW: President Vladimir Putin said Sunday that developing Russia’s nuclear forces was now an “absolute priority” following the expiry of its last remaining nuclear treaty with the US.
“The development of the nuclear triad, which guarantees Russia’s security and ensures effective strategic deterrence and a balance of forces in the world, remains an absolute priority,” Putin said in a video message.
His speech came on Russia’s “Defender of the Fatherland Day,” a holiday that is an occasion for military pomp and Kremlin-sponsored patriotism.
Putin vowed to keep “strengthening the army and navy” and draw on military experience from the nearly four-year conflict in Ukraine.
All branches of the armed forces would be improved, he said, including their “combat readiness, their mobility, and their ability to operate in all conditions, even the most difficult.”
Putin’s remarks came just two days before the fourth anniversary of Russia’s assault on Ukraine that sparked a war that has shattered towns, uprooted millions and killed large numbers on both sides.
Moscow and Washington — the world’s two main nuclear powers — are no longer bound by any arms control pact since the New START agreement expired earlier this month.
But Russia said it would continue taking a “responsible” approach to strategic nuclear capability and respecting the limits set on its arsenal.
