Torches and flowers, no party symbols.
Politics is preparing to pay homage to Alexei Navalny, adhering without exception to the initiative launched by Carlo Calenda.
Even if they will find themselves sharing Piazza del Campidoglio in Rome with representatives with decidedly different sensitivities compared to what happens in Russia and Ukraine.
But it cannot be "a festival of hypocrisy" according to +Europa leader Riccardo Magi: "Oh no dear Salvini, you can't play all the parts in comedy. I remember very well when you defined Navalny's arrest as a 'media hoax', who was a leader of only '3%', when you 'could laugh' if someone called Putin a dictator, when you wanted to mistake two Mattarellas for half a Putin".
An attack dropped by the Northern League leader, confirming that "absolutely yes" his party will participate in the initiative, hoping that "2024 will be the year of the end of too many ongoing wars, between Russia and Ukraine, between Israel and Palestine. The war is always death, suffering, defeat and therefore I count on Italy to be a protagonist of peace".
In Moscow and in many capitals, flowers are becoming a symbol of commemorations for the Russian opponent who died in a remote penal colony beyond the Arctic Circle.
Even in Milan.
"A dozen people" who placed them under Anna Politkovskaya's plaque "found agents there who identified them", Democratic Party senator Filippo Sensi denounced on social media, announcing a parliamentary question to the Minister of the Interior Matteo Piantedosi: "We will demand an account of what country we are".
On the eve of the Rome event, work was done on the schedule, which is still being defined.
It remains to be decided whether there will be interventions at the microphone, whether politicians will also make them or possibly only personalities from civil society and culture who oppose Putin.
The only certainty: no party symbol.
Elly Schlein will be in the square with a delegation from the Democratic Party, including the mayor Roberto Gualtieri, there will be the other opposition parties, obviously Action but also M5s, Iv (not Matteo Renzi, in Latina for the presentation of his book), Avs, + Europe, Psi.
And representatives of FdI, Lega, FI and Nm, as well as the CGIL, CISL and UIL unions and the Bellisario Foundation.
The bipartisan response "is an excellent signal in a country that is unfortunately very conflictual", according to Calenda who would hope for it "also on healthcare and wages".
The Action leader thought of the initiative in the Capitol as a way to reiterate that "Italians, regardless of political inclination, care about democracy and freedom", while Russia "today, unfortunately, is a dangerous imperialist dictatorship".
About to go to Ukraine for the second anniversary of the war, the former minister is convinced that politics must "make Putin understand that he must stop, or sooner or later he will attack a Baltic country and we will enter into direct conflict. We must be tough now. History has taught us that dictators either understand that there is a reaction or they don't stop."
Reproduction reserved © Copyright ANSA