New Delhi, June 15: “Hi friends, from #Melodi”, this is how Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni captioned a small selfie video showing her camaraderie with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The two leaders met on Friday towards the end of Prime Minister Modi’s day-long visit to Apulia, southern Italy, during which he thanked the Italian Prime Minister for the invitation to attend the G7 Summit.
This was his first foreign visit after assuming charge for a historic third term as the prime minister.
The five-second video was shared by Meloni on her X account on Saturday.
The selfie video of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Italian counterpart Giorgia Meloni smiling and waving at the camera is set to become one of the most viewed clips on social media.
The clip has gathered over 20.2 million views and over 64,000 re-posts on X in less than nine hours.
The video showed the two leaders happy and smiling after their bilateral meeting held on the sidelines of the G7 Summit in Italy’s Apulia on Friday evening.
The same video post has got over 19.1 million views on Meloni’s Instagram handle.
“Hello from the Melodi team,” the 47-year-old Italian leader, the country’s first woman prime minister, said in the video, in which Modi, 73, was seen laughing behind her.
Prime Minister Modi re-shared the video and wrote, “Long live India-Italy friendship!”.
Sharing the picture, Meloni wrote in the caption, “Good friends at COP28, #Melodi.”
During their bilateral talks here on Friday, the two leaders reviewed the progress of the bilateral strategic partnership and agreed to strengthen cooperation in global fora and multilateral initiatives, including the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor.
“Had a very good meeting with PM @GiorgiaMeloni,” Prime Minister Modi wrote on X.
“We discussed ways to further cement India-Italy relations in areas like commerce, energy, defence, telecom and more. Our nations will work together in futuristic areas like biofuels, food processing and critical minerals,” he said after the meeting.
Replying to the Italian PM’s post on X, Prime Minister Modi wrote: “Long live India-Italy friendship!”. The post got 8.6 million views till Saturday evening.
Last December, Meloni had posted a selfie with PM Modi along the sidelines of the COP28 summit in Dubai, which too had gone massively viral.
“Good friends at COP28,” read the Italian PM’s post on X on December 1, 2023, which has got over 47.3 million views.
Prime Minister Modi’s “Meeting friends is always a delight” reply to Meloni’s post the next day also got over 12 million views and trended on the platform for a long time. (Agencies)
