Ukraine: EC has no comment on Berlusconi statements

(ANSA) - ROME, SEP 23 - European Commission spokesman Eric Mamer said Friday the EC had no comment on ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi's assertion that Russian President Vladimir Putin was pushed into the Ukraine war by the Russian people and media and expected to replace the Zelensky administration with "decent people".
    The EU's spokesman on foreign affairs, Peter Stano, nodded with a smile after Mamer's remark.
    Berlusconi, three-time ex-premier and centre-right Forza Italia (FI) party leader, told Italian TV Thursday that Putin was pushed by pro-Russian separatists in the Donbass and the Russian media and people into war with its neighbour.
    The billionaire media magnate and old friend of Putin's, who has condemned the war, told Porta a Porta that the separatists came to Moscow and told the media that Ukraine's attacks had reaped 16,000 deaths and Putin was doing nothing to defend them.
    "Putin was pushed by the Russian population, by his party and by his ministers to invent this special operation", said the 86-year-old mogul turned politician.
    "So the troops were supposed to enter, reach Kiyiv in a week, replace the Zelensky government with decent people and a week later come back.
    "Instead they found an unexpected resistance which was then fed by arms of all kind s form the West.
    "The war has lasted more than 200 days, the situation has become very difficult, I feel ill when I hear of the dead because I have always believed that war is the greatest madness of all".
    (ANSA).