With Ukraine or “neutral”? The war splits the old center-left, three squares for three oppositions

The first appointment is for Thursday 13 October at 6.30 pm under the Russian embassy with a clear and unambiguous “platform”: there is an aggressor and violator of international law, Vladimir Putin’s Russia, who must be condemned; and there is an attacked, Volodymyr Zelensky’s Ukraine, which must be defended and supported also by sending weapons. Organizing the mobilization is a group of associations including Marco Bentivogli’s Base Italia and the Youth Committee for Ukraine. And this is the event in which he decided to participate, beating the M5s, the dem secretary Enrico Letta. Because to claim peace in a neutral way, without clearly taking the side of Ukraine, means for the outgoing secretary of the Democratic Party to be in fact in favor of Vladimir Putin’s strategy and hoping for the surrender of the country invaded and massacred by the Russians.

The second appointment is in mid-November, also in Rome (the date is still to be set between two options: 12 and 19), to invoke peace immediately. Even if you overlook specifying how to get it. Promoted by associations such as Acli and Arci, this is the event in which the president of the M5s Giuseppe Conte decided to participate, albeit without flags. Who is not there to be portrayed as pro-Putinian for his position against sending weapons to Ukraine: “They shamefully use this accusation as a club to stifle any debate.”

The third appointment, for now only announced, is concomitant with the second and is promoted by the leader of the so-called Third Pole (Action plus Italy Viva) Carlo Calenda, who despite sharing the Atlanticist and anti-Putinian position of Letta will not participate in the sit in front of the Russian Embassy: Better a counter-demonstration in Milan in favor of Ukraine and against Putin.

Between Rome and Milan, three different squares for the three oppositions

Nothing more than this ballet of demonstrations on the war in Ukraine (in addition to the three mentioned there are many others scheduled in the coming weeks, the most important of which is that of November 5 in Rome of 500 social and trade union realities to claim peace but also rights and work) describes the split in the opposition to the forming Meloni government. Or better of the three oppositions, albeit with some distinctions: in this phase the distance between the M5s and the Pd is strong on the issues, while between the Pd and the Third pole it is a distance mainly due to the “visibility” sought by Calenda and Matteo Renzi towards their former party. But still a distance.

The real rift between Letta and Conte (and Draghi) was over the war in Ukraine

It remains that, on a political level, the Democratic Party and Action are united in accusing the M5s of being ambiguous in their condemnation of Russia and the M5s accusing the Democratic Party and Action of not opposing the military escalation and, in this way, of not pushing enough for the peace negotiations. And it is no coincidence that it is precisely the question of the war in Ukraine that has divided the former center-left even more deeply in recent days, which has already appeared in no particular order in the elections on 25 September. “It was the war in Ukraine that changed everything,” Letta often repeats, recalling the events that led to the shattering of that long-sought and in some cases successfully tested in the municipal authorities. Even before Conte’s decision to bring down the Draghi government, the rift between the Pd and M5s had already taken place in terms of international positioning.