8 March 2018

The Guardian: Will Putin benefit from Italian populist parties' Kremlin leanings?

Both the Five Star Movement (M5S) and the League – previously known as the Northern League – have raised the possibility of abandoning Nato, called for ending sanctions on Russia they say have hurt the Italian economy, and have been supportive of Russia’s campaign in Syria.  [...]

Matteo Salvini, the head of the League, has made several trips to Moscow, including one visit weeks before the 2016 constitutional referendum he staunchly opposed. The “no” vote ultimately won the contest, marking a major defeat for the then-prime minister, Matteo Renzi, the head of the Democratic party and close ally of former president Barack Obama. [...]

In 2016, Manlio Di Stefano, one of the party’s foreign policy experts, gave a speech before a conference of Putin’s United Russia party in which he not only called for an end to EU sanctions, but said it was evident that the “Ukraine crisis” was a result of meddling by the EU and US in Russian affairs.

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