Marseille, France. Italian President Sergio Mattarella gave a speech at the University of Marseille, on the occasion of receiving an honorary degree, in which he reasoned: “The strategy of appeasement didn’t work in 1938. Why should it work today? An abandonment of responsibility led those countries to sacrifice the principles of justice and legitimacy, in the attempt to avoid conflict, in the name of any solution and a stability that would inevitably be lacking.” The emergence of “third-millennium neo-feudal figures—new corsairs to whom patents should be attributed—who aspire to be entrusted with lordships in the public sphere, to manage parts of the common goods represented by cyberspace and outer space, almost usurpers of democratic sovereignty.” The situation of international relations is serious: tariffs, nationalism, new “corsairs” who want to emerge from the private sphere and take over public affairs. In the 1930s, “rather than cooperation, the criterion of domination prevailed.” This was the plan of the Third Reich and the Russian aggression against Ukraine is of this nature.” A speech that will not go unnoticed in Moscow, which several days later officially reacted with its own diplomacy with a violent attack on the Italian head of state, and with cyber attacks on Italy.
