Why #Al Bano and not #Amadeus should read #Zelensky's message at #SanremoFestival

#Al Bano and not #Amadeus

should read President #Zelensky's

message at Sanremo Festival

·????????10 February 2023 Startmag

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The article by Marco Mayer, former Cybersecurity Adviser to the Italian Minister of the Interior (2017-18) and current lecturer at the?Lumsa?Intelligence and National Security specialization course and at the #Luiss Cybersecurity Master

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Since 12 (local time) yesterday, Poland has closed the Bobrowniki border with Belarus.?It is one of the busiest crossings between the two states: in January alone, over 19,000 cars and 4,345 trucks entered Poland from Belarus, and 22,000 cars and 5,929 trucks left.

Polish Interior Minister Mariusz Kaminski said this further escalation was due to "important reasons of state security".

The Polish government's decision is likely a reaction to the eight-year sentence of Polish-born journalist Andrzej Poczobut by a Belarusian court.?The reporter was arrested in March 2021 on charges of "attacking national security, inciting hatred towards national and religious communities and rehabilitating Nazism".

For Belarus, the crackdown on journalists and bloggers is nothing new.?Suffice it to say that already 23 years ago - way back in 2000 - Amnesty International had issued an urgent report on the repressive measures against journalists and dissidents in Belarus.

The Lukashenko regime has called the Polish decision on the border a catastrophic act for Belarus, and this afternoon the charge d'affaires of the Polish embassy in Minsk was immediately summoned by the foreign minister.

Warsaw's decision touches on a crucial aspect in relations between the European Union and Russia, an aspect that has remained somewhat overshadowed by the political controversies that resulted in Zelensky's failure to make a video connection in Sanremo.

In my humble opinion, Carlo Calenda, Matteo Salvini and Piersilvio Berlusconi have underestimated the fact that the freedom of information denied in Putin's Russia is a?sine qua non?also in music, in all the performing arts and in entertainment.

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When the hymn to freedom by Pegah Moshir Pour, the 31-year-old Italian-Iranian activist, arrived on the Ariston stage, no political leader protested.?Why then double standards??Freedom guarantees everyone's right to speak, even the most hardened left-wing and far-right extremists.

Pegah Moshir Pour proposed to the Italian public the words of a song that has become the anthem of the rebellion of the Iranian people, setting to music the tweets of the young people who wrote to denounce the freedoms denied.?A song where it is remembered that in Iran to be able to dance in the street you risk ten years in prison, where it is forbidden to kiss and hold hands with those you love and where you can pay with your life for the courage to take off your veil.

Speaking of freedom of information, yesterday I listened live to the Deputy Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation Alexander Grushko as he spoke at an interesting seminar on the militarization of the Baltic promoted by the famous Valdai Club think tank, created years ago by President Vladimir Putin.

I suggest Startmag?readers to?listen to his?full speech?in English (or Russian, for those who know him).

The main thesis supported by Grushko is that within a political vision based on the distinction between democracy and autocracy there is no space for Europe, because it is reduced to a mere satellite of the United States.

In Grushko's approach – a cultured politician prepared in matters of international politics – everything seems to boil down to a question of interests.?For Grushko, as for Putin, Europe's "national" interest would be to continue importing Russian gas at low prices without obeying Washington's presumed?diktats?on sanctions.

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This vision reflects archaic and reductive visions that are perhaps inspired (in an inaccurate way) by the first realist theories in the discipline of international relations, according to which the different political regimes of states do not influence their foreign policy.?Angelo Panebianco, to cite one of the leading European experts on the subject, in the book?The Democratic Warriors?explained how the ancient dispute between the liberal theorists who exalt the specificities of the foreign policies of democracies and the realist theorists of the state-power is wrong and ill-posed who deny them (as Russian diplomacy theorizes today).

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Conversely, it is true that there have never been wars between democratic countries (theory of democratic peace).?The international behaviors encouraged by democracies are therefore effectively different because they are forced to take much more account of public opinion than those of authoritarian political systems.?However – Panebianco wisely adds – one cannot be too schematic, because there are also some common elements in the foreign policies of all countries in matters of national security.

The stellar distance on values makes it difficult to reopen a dialogue between the EU and Putin's Russia, even regardless of the Ukraine dossier.?Each country chooses the regime it wants, but it is wrong to underestimate the power of ideas, or the factors that we would once have defined as "ideological".

Compared to the Cold War, however, there is a significant difference.?At the time there was an opposition between open and secular societies on the one hand and the Marxist-Leninist doctrine of the Soviet Union on the other.?Not today.?The values that inspire all democracies (Western, Asian and African) are roughly always the same: political, civil and religious freedoms for all citizens, the rule of law, independence of the judiciary and,?last but not least?, freedom of information.

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What does today's Russia propose in ideal terms??Difficult to answer.?Maybe Matteo Salvini can help us understand.?June 7, 2018, Villa Abamelek, Janiculum Hill, Russian Independence Day come to mind.?The news reports: “The new interior minister Matteo Salvini arrives, welcomed like a star.?Applause, handshakes.?And then the leader of the League is admitted to a long private conversation with the Russian ambassador in Italy, Sergey Razov” .

Fabrizio Cicchitto, an authoritative source for understanding the dynamics of Italian politics, recently wrote that with regard to Zelensky in Sanremo "it may also be that the Russian ambassador Razov has some reason for satisfaction who can once again show his master its power to blackmail a large part of the Italian political, financial and television world".?Incidentally, Cicchitto's statement can also serve as a starting point for an in-depth study of COPASIR in analogy with what President Lorenzo Guerini initiated?on the subject of China and 5G?during his previous experience as president of the Parliamentary Committee for the Security of the Republic.

Perhaps, unlike the Cold War, Russia's behavior could be described as power politics devoid of ideology.?Some argue that Putin's polar star is traditional values.?But homeland, family and religious faith are values that can be easily cultivated in democratic states without the need to persecute journalists, arrest and/or torture dissidents, scare away the best talents, censor the press and invade a country with tanks close, as happened a year ago in Ukraine and earlier in Crimea, Georgia, Crimea, Afghanistan, Czechoslovakia and Hungary.

The political figure of Russia today appears dry.?It almost seems – I say this obviously in a provocative way – that the casual use of tanks is the element of continuity in the political image of an imperial nation which, conversely, is based on an extraordinary humanistic and scientific culture.

In 1997 I remember attending the celebrations of the 750th year of the founding of the city of Moscow.?Despite the economic crisis there were high hopes.?Literally half the world attended the ceremony and official dinner in the Kremlin: representatives of foreign countries, scientists and intellectuals, the major international entrepreneurs and in those days even a concert by the great?Luciano Pavarotti?.

With respect to that cultural and religious awakening, the democratic countries were wrong because they thought that the end of the USSR coincided with the death of Russia.?In the second half of the 1990s, they did not give Moscow the necessary support to deal with the financial crisis also because they dominated the neoliberal recipes that have done so much damage around the world.

AL BANO AND ZELENSKY'S MESSAGE IN SAN REMO

25 years have passed and gradually Russia seems to have become more and more withdrawn and isolated in itself.?You can't reduce everything to interest.?Against this backdrop of Putin's obstinacy (and of his variegated magic circle from?Patriarch Kirill?to?Razmand Kadirov?) the call for a ceasefire and the resumption of diplomatic contacts - while absolutely acceptable - continues to fall on deaf ears.

What to do??I think that?Al Bano, who is in favor of Zelensky's presence but a great friend of Russia?and much loved by the Russian people, could perhaps help us.

As Amadeus, I wouldn't want to be the one to read the text tomorrow.?Instead, I would ask Al Bano to read Zelensky's message in Sanremo.?Russian citizens would thus understand that the message is not hostile.?Albano Carrisi's voice would beautifully interpret the call for freedom, justice and peace that comes from the Ukrainian people;?maybe even in the Kremlin someone's ears would ring.?If not now, when?

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