Matteo Salvini met a delegation of Italian entrepreneurs still doing business in Russia in Milan this week and told them the government would make its maximum effort to protect their companies and the jobs attached to them. It was a domestic pledge to a specific group of business owners, but it did not stay domestic for long.
Russia's ambassador to Italy, Alexey Paramonov, welcomed the meeting within hours, calling it the beginning of a return of the Italian establishment to realism, pragmatism and common sense. Paramonov used the moment to make the broader case Moscow has been making since sanctions began, that Italian exporters have lost markets they cannot easily replace, that bilateral trade has fallen by nearly a tenth of its former volume, and that energy cooperation between the two countries has almost entirely stopped, describing the sanctions regime itself as a form of hybrid war against Russia.
Salvini's own framing was more careful than the ambassador's. He said Italy has tried to stay more cautious than other European countries in how it approaches Russia, stopped short of calling for sanctions to be lifted immediately, and said he opposed cutting ties with Russia outright, favoring instead a resumption of commercial, sporting, academic and cultural relations once the war in Ukraine ends. That is a meaningfully narrower position than the one Paramonov attributed to him, a difference in emphasis the Russian embassy was not inclined to preserve.