A hunting trip and a heart torn from the roe deer. The crude hunting story starring Silvio Berlusconi and Vladimir Putin, proposed today to Corriere della Sera by Fabrizio Cicchitto, former group leader of the People of Freedom in the Chamber, did not go unnoticed.
In the years in which he was close to the Russian president, Cav hosted his friend in Sardinia and in his homes. Then it was Putin who invited Berlusconi, welcomed in a dacha in Russia, for a hunting trip. A story that dates back many years ago, to the early 2000s, and which, according to Cicchitto’s story, left Berlusconi himself somewhat annoyed. “Putin told me ‘Silvio, let’s go hunting’. I thought ‘hunting? I’ve never touched a rifle’. But he insisted and so I accompanied him – was Berlusconi’s story reported today by Cicchitto -. When we when we arrived in the woods he gave me a rifle and I felt anxious. As we walked in the snow, Putin saw two deer and motioned for me to take aim at one dead I would have shot. So he shot them both and killed them.”
An episode followed that left the former Italian prime minister stunned. “Putin looked at me satisfied and said ‘today I will offer you extraordinary food’. He went down the slope to go towards the animals, holding a knife and cut open an animal taking out its heart. Then he had a man hand it over from the escort, he gave it to me and put that bloody piece of meat on it and said ‘it will be an exceptional meal’.