Senate that one should "simply ask of the second highest office of the state to explain those relationships with those men who have subsequently been condemned for association with the Mafia" on the RAI current affairs talk show television program Che tempo che fa. The statement of Travaglio resulted in fierce negative reactions from Italian politicians, including from the centre left, except for Antonio Di Pietro who said that Travaglio was "merely doing his job". Some called for chief executives at RAI to be dismissed. The political commentator (and future leader) Beppe Grillo supported Travaglio, while Schifani announced he would go to Court and sue Travaglio for slander. Schifani said Travaglio's accusation was based on "inconsistent or manipulated facts, not even worthy of generating suspicions", adding that "someone wants to undermine the dialogue between the government and the opposition." In 2009, the German Association of Journalists assigned Travaglio its annual award for Freedom of the Press, describing him as a "brave and critical colleague [...] exposing continually the attempts of Italian politicians, especially Silvio Berlusconi, to influence the media to their advantage and to negate critical reports." In February 2022, he called the news of an impending Russian invasion of Ukraine an "American fake news". He is a leading critic of Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his stances have been criticized as anti-Ukraine and pro-Vladimir Putin. His newspaper's reporting on the war has been seen as so pro-Russia that the Russian embassy has praised and retweet it. Travaglio is a Catholic. Political leanings Travaglio considers himself as having always been a liberal, or, like he says, "liberal-montanellian." During his 2001 interview given to Daniele Luttazzi in the television program Satyricon, he claimed to be a liberal ("a pupil of Montanelli") who found "asylum" in the Left area without identifying himself as leftist. In more recent interviews (2010), confirming such statements, he said he has ideas closer to positions that in other countries are normally represented by the Right. In a letter sent to il Giornale in 2007, Travaglio referred to himself as Catholic and anticommunist. In a 2008 interview given to , contained in the book Il rompiballe, Travaglio said: "in France I would vote with closed eyes for a Chirac, a Villepin". "In Germany I would surely vote for Merkel. I liked very much Reagan and Thatcher". However, he said that "my Right doesn't exist. It's imaginary. It's the liberal Right.