Before venturing into the story, let us recall some facts about Italy, which could help explain why this country could be a natural objective for IRA trolls. Assuming Russia’s intention is to weaken the position of the EU to enhance its own importance, to foster instability in one of the EU’s largest country means to trigger instability in the whole Union, and Italy might be one of the easiest target. Let’s see why.

Why Italy?

Italy is nowadays seen as among the weakest economies of the Eurozone, with high levels of unemployment and growth rates which fail to keep up with those of other countries. Its politics is particularly unstable and the electoral system fails to give rise to lasting governments and stable majorities, so that elections are frequent. The following histogram shows that the number of prime ministers in the last two decades is almost unrivalled, 14 in the last 24 years and 65 since 1945.

The next plot is a good indicator of the economical situation of the Country, drawing a comparison of government gross debt in percent of GDP for some countries of the Eurozone (source: IMF).

What’s happening in politics?

The political equilibrium has recently shifted towards less traditional parties following the economic crisis and the fall of Silvio Berlusconi, who has been the most stable political figure since 1994. The main parties at the moment are:

  1. The Democratic Party (PD), a centre-left party which lacks a strrong leadership after Matteo Renzi lost popularity following a defeat in the 2006 constitutional referendum. Matteo Renzi (picture below) has been secretary of the party from 2014 to 2016 and Prime Minister during the same years.

  2. The League, Lega. Formerly known as the Northern League, a party supporting the independence of Northern Italy, the right-wing League recently set itself more national ambitions. It is a populist party, and currently the main party in the country, as well as the member of the coalition government together with M5S. Its key interests are fighting migration and challenging European rigidities in terms of budget limitations. Its leader, Matteo Salvini (in the picture below), is also deputy Prime Minister.

  3. The Five-Star Movement (M5S) is a populist party, which aims at tackling social inequalities and fighting political privileges. Founder of the party was the comedian Beppe Grillo, in the picture below.

This is how the Country responded in the 2018 general elections, which lead to a colaition government led by the M5S and the League. The map shows well the crisis of the left parties and the triumph of the M5S, which was also the main party in most of the regions.

Where does Russia come in?

Both the League and the M5S hold eurosceptic positions, blaming the crisis on the common currency, the big financial institutions and the little flexibility available within the agreements of the European Union.

As many political commentators have stressed, a government formed by the M5S and the League is a threat to the stability of the Eurozone, and this is the reason why Russia, whose political ambitions are in conflict with those of the EU, might have all the interests to support it. We will see, however, that trolls do not have a clear preference for a single party, and it is not hard to find tweets for or against each of them. Trolls, we will show, would rather put forward controversial issues, and let the tension mount.