Italy’s deputy prime minister says his country will oppose a renewal of European Union sanctions against Russia, but he suggested Rome is not ready to break with the rest of the EU and veto a rollover of the sanctions.
- Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
“I come here because I am convinced that sanctions are economic, social, and cultural madness,” Matteo Salvini said on a visit to Moscow on October 17. Salvini leads Italy’s far-right League party and is also Italy’s interior minister.
He criticized the basis of the sanctions, which were imposed on Moscow after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and backing for separatists in eastern Ukraine in a…