Italian right-wing populist Salvini questions the effectiveness of sanctions against Russia
The Italian right-wing populist Matteo Salvini has questioned the effectiveness of the EU sanctions imposed on Russia because of the Ukraine war, triggering criticism in his own country. Several months have passed and people are “paying their bills twice and quadruple”while after seven months of war “Russia’s coffers are filling up with money,” the head of the far-right Lega party told radio station RTL on Sunday.
Salvini questioned the success of the sanctions. It is “important to reconsider the strategy to save jobs and businesses in Italy,” he said. The head of the Democratic Party (PD), Enrico Letta, one of Salvini’s main opponents in the current campaign for the parliamentary elections on September 25, countered his statement with the words: “I think Putin could not have said it better.”
Mara Carfagna, Minister for southern Italy, accused Salvini of allowing the Kremlin boss to exploit him. “When I hear Salvini talking about sanctions, it’s like listening to Putin’s propaganda,” she said. She’s “worried about a country like Italy that winks at Russia,” Carfagna said on the sidelines of an economic forum on Lake Como.
Links between Salvini and Moscow have raised concerns in Italy, particularly since the Russian invasion of Ukraine and could become a problem for the right-wing electoral alliance of Lega, former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia and Giorgia Meloni’s ultra-right Fratelli d’Italia party in the election campaign.
In the past few weeks, statements by ex-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, among others, have sparked a debate in Italy about Moscow’s possible influence on the elections.
Both Salvini’s Lega and Berlusconi’s Forza Italia have longstanding ties to Russia and Russian President Vladimir Putin. In 2017, the Lega signed a cooperation pact with Putin’s United Russia party. Salvini, who in the past has liked to pose in T-shirts with a portrait of Putin, recently emphasized that Moscow has not the slightest influence on the elections in Italy. (AFP)
