The leader of the League, Matteo Salvini, dismisses as “ridiculous” a recent message from the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Policy on the Ukrainian crisis
A message published on social networks by the Spanish Josep Borrell, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Policy, led to a controversy in Italy on Wednesday. Reporting on the sanctions imposed on 351 members of the Duma, the Russian lower house, in response to Moscow’s armed actions in Ukraine, Borrell commented that they could no longer go “shopping in Milan, partying in Saint Tropez” nor to buy “diamonds in Antwerp”.
The leader of the League, Matteo Salvini, took advantage of this unfortunate message from the high-ranking Spanish official, which he later deleted, to resume his usual Eurosceptic attacks. “For the head of the foreign policy of the European Union, the sanctions against Russia serve to block the purchases of the Russians in Milan and their parties in Saint Tropez… We have reached the ridiculous or, perhaps, the tragic,” he criticized Salvini. The MEP of his party, Marco Zanni, stressed that it was not the first time that Borrell had committed a “lightness” and recalled “the humiliation he suffered in Moscow, being mistreated” by Sergei Lavrov, Russian Foreign Minister.
Further along was parliamentarian Giovanbattista Fazzolari, from the right-wing and Eurosceptic Brothers of Italy party. Fazzolari urged the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Government of Rome, Luigi di Maio, to ask Borrell for explanations for “making idiotic tweets with the sanctions for the Russians who will not go shopping in Milan. There people die, people fight and we have a clown who says ‘no shopping in Milan’».
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