The tie Vladimir Putin wore at Moscow’s Victory Day parade is thought to be by Maurizio Marinella, Italy’s “king” of fine ties. It is just one of three or four hundred the designer has delivered to Putin in recent years, most of them gifts from former premier, Silvio Berlusconi, according to Marinella himself.

While Berlusconi’s influence has waned considerably since he strutted the world stage in his Cuban heels befriending dictators and offending democratic leaders, the Russian strongman continues to make new friends and influence people in the Bel Paese.

Previously openly pro-Putin party leaders like Matteo of La Lega, who once told Putin his anti-immigration and anti-euro party would work: “so that Italy has real parliamentary elections, just as open as in your country [Russia]” and whose party received considerable from Moscow and are now frantically backpedalling, repositioning themselves as peaceniks in order to justify their opposition to sending arms to Ukraine.

But La Lega is not alone. When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed the Italian parliament in March, around one in three parliamentarians chose not to attend.

Meanwhile, every Italian talk show seems to be featuring a prominent pro-Russian commentator in the name of “balance”, to the extent that Copasir, the Parliamentary Committee for the Security of the Republic is investigating "a disinformation operation organized and conceived by high level figures in the Russian government".

Matters came to a head on May 1st, when two interviews went out on Italian prime time TV simultaneously. One (on Rete 4, owned by Berlusconi’s Mediaset) was with the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, who justified calling the Jewish Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky a Nazi by digging up up the long conspiracy theory that Hitler had Jewish blood. The other was with Vladimir Solovyev, a close friend of Putin’s and considered the official voice of the Kremlin. He owns two villas on Lake Como and is by now a regular fixture on La 7’s Non è l’Arena talk show. Both Lavrov and Solovyev are currently subjected to EU and Italian sanctions.

But it isn’t only the private channels that have been giving Putin’s propagandists a platform. Nadana Fridirksson is a regular presence on several political talk shows, including “Carta Bianca”, on public service broadcaster RAI’s third channel. When not gracing Italian screens she works for Zvezda, Russian Ministry of Defence ‘s TV channel, and was the first to show images of a devastated Mariupol, attributing the destruction to “Ukrainian nationalists".

Now Copasir is looking into the interesting question of who decides whom to invite onto these high-profile talk shows. Do individual programme bookers act independently or does the company provide a list of approved interviewees? Does someone in the Russian embassy suggest potential contacts? What, if any, checks are carried out? [I was once invited onto RAI’s leading afternoon current affairs to pontificate on Brexit for no other reason than I was British, as far as I can tell.]

Apart from the Russians, there are others, Italian “experts” who the security services believe are secretly on the Russian payroll.

Why is this happening in Italy in particular? Nathalie Tocci, highly respected director of the Italian Institute of International Affairs, explained why she refused to debate with a previously unknown Italian expert on Russia:

“In Italy the community of those who are interested in international policy is tiny. We’re not interested in international policy in this country. Why has Russia chosen Italy as the weak link? Because disinformation sails on the wind of ignorance. Why are these individuals suddenly springing up like mushrooms?”

It’s a slippery subject. No one is denying the need for debate and to give space to a range of opinions. However, as Josep Borrell, the High Representative of the European Union for Security Policy said while defending the decision to ban Russia Today and the Sputnik agency:

"They are not independent media, they are assets, they are weapons in the Kremlin's manipulation ecosystem... We are not trying to decide what is true and what is false. We don't have Ministries of Truth. But we have to focus on foreign actors who intentionally, in a coordinated manner, try to manipulate our information environment."

Ivan Scalfarotto from the centrist Italia Viva party agrees. “Everyone has the right to express their view, but I wouldn’t talk to the Ku Klux Klan.”

It is inconceivable that the Foreign Minister of a major Western power would be given a prime time slot on any Russian channel to expound his country’s point of view, while a spokesperson for that country’s leader was simultaneously appearing on another channel. Until that form of “balance” exists, Italian TV channels may want to consider giving less airtime to “weapons in the Kremlin's manipulation ecosystem”.