‘An exceptional meal’: Vladimir Putin cut out a deer’s heart, presented it to Silvio Berlusconi

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Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2013 shot and killed a deer, cut out the animal’s heart, presented it to former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and said it would make an “exceptional meal” that the two men would share, according to an Italian politician who says he heard a first-hand account of the incident.

The story was recounted by Italian lawmaker Fabrizio Cicchitto, a close ally of the late Berlusconi, who died last year. Mr. Cicchitto told the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera in an article published Sunday that Berlusconi recounted the story after returning from a trip with Mr. Putin in Russia in 2013.

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According to Mr. Cicchitto, the Russian president suggested that the two men go hunting. They saw two deer, and Mr. Putin shot and killed both.

“He looked at me with satisfaction: ‘Today I will offer you extraordinary food,’” Mr. Cicchitto recounted Berlusconi as saying. “He went down the slope to go towards the animals, holding a knife. He quartered a beast and took out its heart. Then he had a man from the escort give him a wooden tray, he gave it to me and put that piece of bloody meat on it: ‘It will be an exceptional meal.’ I had a stroke. I hid behind a tree and vomited.”

“Maybe it’s just the habit of a hunter,” Berlusconi concluded, according to Mr. Cicchitto.

Berlusconi has been described as a close ally of Mr. Putin. Even after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Berlusconi defended the Russian leader.

“Putin was pushed by the Russian population, by his party and by his ministers to invent this special operation,” he said in September 2022, according to the BBC.

“The troops were supposed to enter, reach Kyiv in a week, replace the Zelenskyy government with decent people and a week later come back,” Berlusconi said. “Instead they found an unexpected resistance, which was then fed by arms of all kinds from the West.”