Italy’s joint Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister Matteo Salvini (AFP/file photo)
Italy’s Interior Minister and deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini has slammed Ukraine’s Euromaidan during its interview with The Washington Post. He described Euromaidan as a “fake revolution”, which were “funded by foreign powers”, vowed to lift sanctions from Russia and said that the reunification of Crimea with Russia is a fact that should be accepted by the West.
A quote from The Washington Post’s interview:
“Q. Why do you want to lift the sanctions on Russia?
A. Because they didn’t prove to be useful, and according to the data, they hurt Italian exports.
Q. You said that Russia had a right to annex Crimea?
A. There was a referendum.
Q. It was a fake referendum.
A. [That is your] point of view. . . . There was a referendum, and 90 percent of the people voted for the return of Crimea to the Russian Federation.
Q. What kind of referendum was it with Russian soldiers there?
A. Compare it to the fake revolution in Ukraine, which was a pseudo-revolution funded by foreign powers — similar to the Arab Spring revolutions. [Editor’s note: Independent fact-checkers have not found evidence for this claim, though it did spread widely after Russian news sources published it.] There are some historically Russian zones with Russian culture and traditions which legitimately belong to the Russian Federation.
Q. Do you support NATO?
A. Yes. We belong to the Atlantic alliance.”
It’s intersting to note how The Washington Post uses “editor’s note” refering “independent fact-checkers” to counter the attitude of Salvini.
Salvini’s interview caused an outrage in the Kiev government which even summoned an Italian ambassador over it.
