«Rovelli? Attacking me with a bloody war on the gates of Europe is a very serious thing»- Corriere.it

“I turn the other cheek and send him a hug.”

Are you making an effort to have a pacifist reaction, Minister Guido Crosetto?

«It’s not a pacifist reaction, because I’m a minister, I’m not a pacifist. It’s just that I’m not a brawler like him and others. That’s why I said I turn the other cheek.”

He is Carlo Rovelli, the physicist who attacked her from the stage of the Concertone on May 1st, essentially calling her a warmonger.

“On Monday evening when Rovelli spoke in Piazza San Giovanni I didn’t hear him, I had to leave at three in the morning for Iraq.”

So in the morning, once you landed in the Middle East, you discovered you were the protagonist of the controversy of the day?

“Exact. I didn’t know anything about it, they told me from Rome as soon as I landed in Baghdad».

The minister answers his cell phone from the Iraqi capital, where he went on a mission to greet the Italian personnel and to hold some institutional meetings. He met, among others, his counterpart Thabet Mohammed Saeed al Abbasi to talk about cooperation. The minister’s tone of voice is tired and a little impatient rather than angry.

Rovelli called her a “death salesman” and linked her past relations with Leonardo and Italy’s military aid to Ukraine. Was it bad?

«It hurt me, of course, as can happen all the times when people talk without knowing. I would never talk about physics and he can’t talk about things he knows nothing about. Unfortunately he wanted to personalize, doing something violent and ad personam and abusing public transport ».

Is he really willing to invite him to dinner to “get to know each other, clarify” and sweep away the dross of the controversy?

«I have no problem meeting him to get to know each other in person, I can invite him to lunch or dinner, he does the same. I don’t have an ideological approach and he should apply the same criterion”.

Rovelli was very hard on her, even without naming her. He has included it among the “marketers of instruments of war” who build weapons “to kill each other”.

“Totally ridiculous accusation, give it time. As the Gospel says, by their fruits you will recognize them”.

A good tree cannot produce bad fruit nor a bad tree produce good fruit…

“Exact. I’m calm and Rovelli must be calm too. And I’m not saying stay calm, maybe he’s taking it badly ».

In what sense, can the physicist be calm?

“Because this government works for peace. He calls himself a pacifist and I hope that by studying Ukraine he doesn’t get the wrong part to work for, because normally whoever is a pacifist is for the Russians. Instead, in this government we are all for peace in Ukraine. And I would like to add something that I consider very important».

Add it.

«Attacking the defense minister at a time like this, with a bloody war on Europe’s gates, is one of the most serious things one can do. I’m working for them too.”

Where “they”, in Crosetto’s reasoning, are the pacifists. When the prime minister chose to lead the defense the entrepreneur and parliamentarian who ten years ago founded Fratelli d’Italia together with her and Ignazio La Russa, the oppositions accused of conflict of interest: Crosetto was , among other things, president of AIAD, the federation of Italian companies for aerospace, defense and security. Conflict that the minister believes he has completely resolved. “He no longer has offices, corporate properties or personal assets that in any way can enter into a relationship with the activities of Minister of Defense”, had made him write time about him in an official note.