It is not common for a CIA director to travel to Moscow. However, when it emerged that John Ratcliffe had secretly visited the Russian capital this week, President Donald Trump downplayed it and said it was just a “semi-routine” trip. That did not stop speculation about the real reason that led Washington to send its top intelligence chief to a country at war with its ally, Ukraine, and at odds with NATO. The last known time the CIA director traveled to Moscow was in November 2021, when William Burns conveyed to Vladimir Putin’s government a warning about its buildup of Russian troops on the Ukrainian border, prior to the start of its invasion in February 2022.

A record broken and a task still to be completed: to continue governing. This Friday, Giorgia Meloni’s Executive becomes the longest-lasting in the history of the Italian Republic. It is 1,413 consecutive days in power, one more than Silvio Berlusconi’s second Government, breaking with an almost atavistic tradition of instability.