Renzi and Calenda are at loggerheads again, this time over Putin

Carlo Calenda ‘is inventing a past that never existed, whilst dreaming of a future that will never come to pass’. The accusation comes from Italia Viva, the party led by former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. At the heart of the dispute are statements made by the leader of Azione to *Corriere della Sera*, in which he claimed to have telephoned President Vladimir Putin in 2016 to ask him to account for Russian interference in the Brexit referendum campaign. The tone of the clash between the two leaders – once allies and government partners – is therefore rising once again.

The incident recounted by the leader of Azione dates back ten years, to when he was Minister for Economic Development in the Renzi government: ‘Do you remember Brexit in 2016? Matteo Renzi and I were in government together; we rang Putin to ask him if they were behind the campaign run by the committees in Britain.’ According to Calenda’s account, the Russian president is said to have replied ironically, ‘Remember that the press is free…’.

These statements led Italia Viva to accuse Calenda of mythomania. His ‘far-fetched’ remarks, according to Renzi’s party, ‘are not simply fake news. Rather, they constitute yet another sign of the Azione secretary’s progressive mythomania’. The statement reads: ‘Megalomaniacs who, unable to write the future, reinvent the past cannot be refuted: they simply need to be helped.’

The sharp reaction from the leader of Azione was not long in coming; after confirming ‘word for word’ what he had told *Il Corriere* about the phone call with Putin, he launched a scathing attack on the president of Italia Viva: ‘Renzi – who, I recall, was on the board of a Russian company right up until the large-scale invasion of Ukraine – probably doesn’t want to upset old and new clients by bringing up this past.’ Calenda also reiterated that he had already spoken about the incident in numerous interviews and had written about it in one of his books. ‘Moreover,’ he concluded, ‘records of such phone calls are kept at the Prime Minister’s Office and are easy to verify.’

Italia Viva has not given up; in a statement, the party clarified: ‘We recall that Calenda was very active in Russia at the 2016 St Petersburg summit, working to strengthen Italy-Russia relations. We recall that Calenda was very active in 2022 in stating – following the Russian invasion – that Ukraine should have remained outside the European Union. We do not recall him showing any particular commitment to the issue of Russia’s objective influence on the 2016 referendums.”