Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni condemned anti-Olympics protests in Milan early Sunday and accused demonstrators of trying to derail the 2026 Winter Games by sabotaging rail infrastructure in northern Italy, according to a statement she posted on Facebook.
Meloni said protesters “demonstrate ‘against the Olympics,’ causing these images to end up on televisions around the world,” and she alleged that “After others cut the railway cables to prevent the trains from leaving,” the sabotage aimed to disrupt the Games. She called those responsible “enemies of Italy and Italians,” and said “thousands of Italians are working to keep the Games running smoothly,” including many volunteers, while she voiced “Solidarity, once again, with the police, the city of Milan,” and those who would see their work undermined.
Italy’s transport ministry said it opened a terrorism investigation into what it described as the synchronized sabotage of railway lines in northern Italy on Saturday, the first day of the Games, the Associated Press reported. No one had claimed responsibility, ANSA reported.
The alleged sabotage began with damage to the central Bologna rail hub, which manages rail traffic between northern and southern Italy, around 6 a.m. Saturday while it was still dark, ANSA reported. It then struck trains in the Pesaro-area along the Adriatic coast, and ANSA reported that infrastructure was burned or cut in both cases. The transport ministry did not provide details, but said it would seek “millions of euros” in compensation from those responsible, while thousands of passengers faced hourslong delays.
In Milan, police confronted protesters near a Winter Olympics venue on Saturday evening. Italian police fired tear gas and a water cannon at dozens of protesters who threw firecrackers and tried to access a highway near the Santagiulia Olympic ice hockey rink at the end of a march, AP reported.
The brief confrontation came after a larger peaceful march that police said drew 10,000 people, including families with small children and students, AP reported. At that earlier demonstration, protesters carried cardboard cutouts representing trees felled to build a new bobsled run in Cortina, and the march included dancers performing to drums and music from a truck. AP reported that one anthem played during the march contained profanity and was against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.
Ahead of the main march, masked protesters set off smoke bombs and firecrackers on a bridge overlooking a construction site about 800 meters (half-mile) from the Olympic Village housing around 1,500 athletes, AP reported. The protest activity coincided with U.S. Vice President JD Vance’s visit to Milan as head of the American delegation, with AP reporting that Vance and his family visited Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” away from the protest.
AP reported that the demonstrations also targeted U.S. agents in Italy and the deployment of ICE-related security personnel to support the U.S. delegation. U.S. Homeland Security Investigations, an ICE unit focused on cross-border crimes, frequently sends officers to overseas events like the Olympics, AP said. It also reported that there was no indication ICE officers were being sent to Italy.
The IOC’s Mark Adams said during the Olympics’ daily media briefing that peaceful protest is legitimate but that “we draw a line at violence,” and added that “That has no place at the Olympic Games.” Adams’s remarks came days after Meloni’s government approved a security decree allowing police to detain people for up to 12 hours when they have reasonable grounds to believe they may act as agitators and disrupt peaceful protests, a measure lawmakers criticized as an attack on freedom of expression, AP reported.
The demonstrations on Saturday followed another protest a week earlier by hundreds who opposed the deployment of ICE agents, AP reported. Like the earlier rally, the Saturday demonstrators said they were opposed to ICE agents’ presence despite official statements that only a small number of agents from an investigative arm would be present in U.S. diplomatic territory and not on the streets.