Vladimir Putin’s supporters furious over sanctions including impact on Italian villas

Russian TV host Vladimir Soloviev has raged after EU sanctions impacted his two luxury Italian villas in Lake Como.

Russian TV host Vladimir Soloviev has been moved to tears as he raged over European Union sanctions hitting his two luxury villas in Lake Como, Italy where George Clooney also owns a home.

As Kremlin propagandists unleashed terrifying warnings of Russia’s 500 nuclear warheads overnight, one television host expressed his fury at losing his luxury properties.

Some of Russia’s most prominent TV personalities have now been hit by the EU sanctions list, cruelly ending the wealthy Russian media’s favourite pastimes of Italian shopping trips and French beach holidays.

Vladimir Soloviev, who is known for strident attacks on the West, flew into a rage over the weekend over the impact of his property holdings in Italy.

“I was told that Europe is a citadel of rights, that everything is permitted, that’s what they said … I know from personal experience about the so-called ‘sacred property rights’,’’ he said.

During Friday’s program of The Evening With Vladimir Soloviev, he complained: “I bought it, paid a crazy amount of taxes, I did everything. And suddenly someone makes a decision that this journalist is now on the list of sanctions. And right away it affects your real estate. Wait a minute. But you told us that Europe has sacred property rights!”

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Russian TV host Vladimir Soloviev.

A disgusted Soloviev complained: “All of a sudden, now they say: ‘Are you Russian? Then we will close your bank account, if it’s in Europe. And if it’s in England, you’re allowed to keep no more than a certain amount there. Why? Because you’re Russian.”

Prominent economist Mikhail Khazin chimed in: “And that’s if you have an old account. They won’t open a new one”.

Soloviev then asked: “Is this the Iron Curtain?” Another participant in the program, Alexander Sosnovsky, then replied: “Yes, absolutely, the Iron Curtain in its worst manifestation, painted in LGBT colours.”

Lake Como is also home to celebrities such as George Clooney. Picture: Frank Fell/Robert Harding via AFP

The program is also known for its homophobic attacks on gay people.

During his Friday broadcast, Soloviev said the Russians would prefer to have President Trump back in charge. At one point, he looked down at his watch and asked: “Is Trump coming back soon?”

The world first learned of Soloviev’s Italian villas after Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny was poisoned and imprisoned.

His supporters then released a video report that revealed state TV host Vladimir Soloviev owned not one, but two villas in Italy.

At Christmas, Navalny’s supporters videotaped the state TV host’s luxury home and left him special gifts including Ukrainian chocolates.

Russian state TV presenter Dmitry Kiselyov, who also has a reputation for tirades against the West and homosexuals, raged that Russia and NATO “want this war”.

“In total, our submarines are capable of launching over 500 warheads, which guarantees the destruction of the US and all NATO countries to boot,’’ he said.

“That’s according to the principle ‘why do we need a world if Russia is not in it?’

“Russia’s nuclear weapons are also delivered by the fastest strategic bombers in the world.”

In 2014, he raged that Russia was the only country “genuinely capable of turning the USA into radioactive ash” and claimed that Ukraine was a country overrun by “bandits”.

Overnight, multiple Russian state media outlets also published an essay that pre-emptively announced Russia would seize Kyiv to establish a new world order.

It boasted of “the coming of a new era of three states, Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, acting in geopolitical terms as a single whole”.

The article, which appeared to have been written with the expectation that Russia would have seized control of Kyiv over the weekend, was then deleted.