Ambassador to Russia lawsuit La Stampa, Giannini: “No lessons from those who imprison dissidents”

“Only in the upside-down world of ‘holy mother Russia’, the one that Putin likes so much, can it happen that an ambassador of a country that has decreed the dirtiest war against a liberal democracy like Ukraine can bring a lawsuit against a newspaper responsible only for telling what is happening in that country “. Thus begins the video, released on the social networks of La Stampa, with which the director of the newspaper, Massimo Gianinini, replies to the accusations of the Russian ambassador Sergey Razov, who today filed a complaint for the article of 22 March entitled ‘If to kill the tyrant is the only way out ‘. “The Russian ambassador Razov attacked us for incitement to commit a crime,” said Giannini, who reconstructed the story. “In a splendid article by perhaps the greatest war correspondent in Italy, Domenico Quirico, who recounted a recurring thesis, which even resides in many chancelleries, according to which at this point in the war perhaps the best thing to do would be to kill the tyrant” , explained the director of La Stampa. “In his article Quirico articulated the thesis, described it in all its aspects and concluded by saying that those who support this thesis are deluding themselves, because even if it were possible to kill the tyrant, things would get even worse”. Giannini presses: “This it is the Russia of today, led by an autocrat who closes newspapers on its territory, we cannot say that he kills, but perhaps this too happens, he kills journalists opposed to the regime, he ends up imprisoning oligarchs or dissidents disliked by the regime, such as Navalniy “. Today “we don’t have to take lessons from that country,” says Giannini. A lesson “that we strongly reject, because we are calm about what we do and write, because we are a free newspaper, which tries to tell the facts but which also has its theses and defends them, its ideas and advocates them”. The director of the Press, quoting the journalist Anna Politikovskaja at the end, concludes: “We love freedom and we will continue to defend it despite all the threats and intimidation, because we know we are on the right side of history”.