Italian actress Ornella Muti is under fire in her home country for her close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The 68-year-old attended the inauguration of a large mural featuring her portrait, painted by Neapolitan artist Ciro Cerullo, in Sochi, Russia, on Wednesday evening.
The painting by the street artist Jorit was inaugurated in Sochi in the presence of the actress and Putin. It is located on the wall of a building on Chudyakov Street and was created as part of a street art festival in which 25 artists from eleven countries participated.
Grandmother from St. Petersburg
“When I thought about how to bring Italy and Russia closer together, I thought of the great actress Ornella Muti,” Jorit said, according to media sources. The actress, whose maternal grandmother came from St. Petersburg, is very popular in Russia and was in the Russian capital Moscow in recent days to attend Fashion Week, where her daughter Naike Rivelli walked the catwalk as a model.
Artist “Mercenaries of dictator Putin”
Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani was irritated by the actions of Jorit and Ornella Muti in Sochi. “Propaganda was the art of the KGB, disinformation was the art of the Soviet Union, and there is clearly someone in Russia who still practices this art. Italy is on Ukraine’s side. But this does not mean that we are at war with the Russian people. The Italian people are friends with the Russian people, but we do not want the Russian army to invade Ukraine,” Tajani said.
The head of the cultural committee in the Italian Chamber of Deputies, Federico Mollicone (Fratelli d’Italia), called Jorit and Muti “mercenaries and artists under the tutelage of post-Soviet dictator Putin.”
Muti recently emphasized that she hoped to obtain Russian citizenship.
Fraud trial at a charity dinner with Putin
Her love for Russia also caused problems for the actress. Because she canceled a theater performance in the small Friulian town of Pordenone in 2010 due to an alleged illness, but instead took part in a charity dinner with Putin in St. Petersburg, Muti ended up in court for fraud.
She was sentenced to eight months in prison and a fine of 600 euros. The actress did not have to go to prison and paid a fine of 30,000 euros. The fee for Muti’s performance at the Verdi Theater in Pordenone would be 25,000 euros.
Source: Krone
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