Rightwing League leader Matteo
Salvini said Friday that Russia won't "minimally" affect the
September 25 general election in Italy a day after Russian
security council deputy chair Dmitri Medvedev urged European
voters to punish their "stupid" governments.
Salvini, who said he was running in Milan, said "Russia won't
influence the vote of the Italians in the slightest.
"Workers, housewives, students and pensioners will choose with
their own heads.
"If there really are people on the Left who think that foreign
countries can condition the vote of the Italians they are
lacking in respect towards the Italians".
"Let's let the Italians vote".
Former Russian president and current deputy chair of its
national security council Medvedev on Thursday urged Europeans
to punish their governments for their "stupidity".
Medvedev, right-hand man to Russian President Vladimir Putin,
said on telegram, "we'd like to see European citizens (at the
polls) not only expressing their malcontent for the actions of
their governments...but also punishing them for their evident
stupidity".
He added "the voters' votes are a powerful lever of influence".
The outgoing national unity Italian government led by Premier
Mario Draghi fully backed Western sanctions against Russia for
its invasion of Ukraine as well as sending arms to Kyiv.
Even the only major opposition party, the post-fascist Brothers
of Italy (FdI), took a strongly pro-NATO and pro-EU stance over
the war.
Two parties in the Draghi government who had previously lauded
Putin, Matteo Salvini's League and Silvio Berlusconi's Forza
Italia (FI), also unequivocally condemned Russian aggression.
FdI leader Giorgia Meloni, who is poised to become Italy's first
post-fascist and first woman premier after September 25
according to current opinion polls, had also previously praised
the Russian strongman.
The centre-left Democratic Party (PD) on Thursday strongly urged
all the right and centre right leaders to condemn Medvedev's
"high tackle" intervention into the Italian general election
campaign.
It also called on the League to severe its ties with Putin's
United Russia party, with whom it formed a relationship on a
visit to Moscow by Salvini in 2017 when the nationalist Italian
leader said of the Russian one that "I admire him and respect
him".
On Friday Salvini said he had not been to Russia for years and
had not contacts with Russian politicians for years.
"I haven't been to Russia for years and I haven't had contacts
with Russian politicians for years. I'm busy with Italy," he
said.
"I hope the (Italian) Left doesn't spend another 30 days
speaking of (this), about Martians and insults".
He said the Left had "done business and drafted trade deals with
Russia" in its postwar Communist heyday, when it was the second
strongest party in Italy behind the long-dominant Christian
Democrats.
For decades the Italian Communist Party (PCI), a forerunner of
the PD, received funding from Moscow and followed its line until
the repression of the Hungarian uprising in 1956 and, even more
so, the Prague Spring of 1968 when its embrace of its own
'Eurocommunism' accelerated.
But payments from Russia to the PCI continued until 1984.
Pressed by reporters on his own past and present relations with
Moscow, Salvini replied: "I've never sealed economic deals of
any kind with anyone".
In other remarks Friday, Salvini said the probable next
right/centre-right government would be able to afford the
League's flagship policy of a flat tax, getting the cash from
the abolition of a controversial 'citizenship wage' basic income
which Meloni said earlier this week had "totally failed" in its
stated aim of banishing poverty and creating jobs.
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