Former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi admitted to intensive care unit

The former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi is in intensive care at San Raffaele hospital in Milan.

Italy’s foreign minister antonio Tajani, who is also a leader of Mr Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party, said the 86-year-old three-time premier was admitted because of an “unresolved problem” related to a previous infection.

Rai News reported that he had been taken to hospital after suffering a “shortness of breath” and that his condition was currently stable.

Mr Berlusconi, whose Forza Italia party is in the ruling government coalition, had been discharged from the same hospital on Friday after undergoing routine checks.

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On Sunday, he shared a photo of himself in a garden full of tulips that was taken at his home in Arcore, near Milan. In an earlier post he wrote that he was back at work and “ready to engage, as always, for the country that I love”.

The billionaire media tycoon, who led three Italian governments between early 1994 and 2011, has had several episodes of ill-health in recent years.

[ Italian election: Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing bloc storms to victory ]

In 2016, he underwent surgery to replace a faulty aortic valve and was hospitalised with Covid-19 in September 2020. He subsequently suffered from lingering ailments related to the virus, an experience he described as “the worst of my life”.

That did not stop him campaigning for general elections in September last year, the outcome of which saw his party clinch power in coalition with prime minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy and Matteo Salvini’s League.This week, he celebrated the rightwing coalition’s local election win in the northern Friuli Venezia-Giulia region.

In February, the scandal-tainted politician was acquitted on allegations of bribing witnesses in a case linked to his “bunga bunga” parties, which had dogged him for more than a decade.

Mr Berlusconi, who claimed he was the victim of “politically inspired judicial persecution”, denied paying anyone to lie for him and said the parties were innocent affairs.

[ Berlusconi says he offered Monza team sex workers in dressing room for win ]

Mr Berlusconi was ejected from parliament in 2013 after a conviction for tax fraud but a ban on him running for office was lifted in time for the 2018 general elections. He was elected senator in the 2022 ballot and is an MEP.

He has come under fire in recent months for making several statements in support of Russian president Vladimir Putin, a longtime friend, including suggesting that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy was responsible for Russia’s invasion.

In October, Mr Berlusconi, who had a “symbolic marriage” with his 32-year-old partner, Marta Fascina, last year, said Mr Putin had sent him bottles of vodka for his birthday. Guardian/AP