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Vladimir Putin cut out the heart of a deer on a hunt with Silvio Berlusconi and served it to him on a tray, making the ex-Italian prime minister vomit, a former Berlusconi colleague said.
The stunt bared the Russian president’s “violent nature,” the colleague said he was told by Berlusconi, who died in 2023.
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Fabrizio Cicchitto, an ex-senator in Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party, told the newspaper Corriere della Sera on Sunday of the pair’s hunting trip in 2013 at one of Putin’s vacation homes.
According to a translation by Politico, Putin spotted two deer and handed his rifle to novice Berlusconi, who declined to shoot. So Putin gunned down the two animals, quartered one of them and pulled out its heart as Berlusconi watched.
“Vladimir showed me a violent nature that I didn’t imagine in such a kind and rational man,” Berlusconi said, per Cicchitto.
A man from Putin’s entourage then served Berlusconi the bleeding organ on a tray and said it would be an exceptional meal.
Berlusconi said the episode was perhaps “just a hunter’s custom,” Cicchitto recalled
Putin has admitted in the past that some of his wildlife stunts have been staged, but his deer-hunting trip with Berlusconi appeared to linger in the controversial three-time premier’s memory.
The scandal-ridden Berlusconi invited scorn when he traded gifts with Putin as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine raged on.
Sasha Mordovets via Getty Images
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