Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said that he was “deeply disappointed and saddened” by the behaviour of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
When he was in power, Berlusconi had a close friendship with Putin, and invited him on vacation to his villa in Sardinia.
“I’ve known him about 20 years ago and he always seemed to me to be a democrat and a man of peace,” the 85-year-old billionaire said, addressing a convention of his conservative Forza Italia party in Rome.
Berlusconi, who served as head of the Italian government three times between 1994 and 2011, had previously refrained from publicly criticising Putin.
“Faced with the horror of the massacres of civilians in Bucha and other places, real war crimes, Russia can not deny its responsibilities,” he said on Saturday.