Italy’s Salvini hints at EU vetoes if sanctions on Russia not eased

Bloomberg

Italy’s deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, said he will push the European Union to ease sanctions on Russia and threatened to block the EU’s agenda if he doesn’t get his way.
At a press conference in Moscow, Salvini, who is also interior minister, said Russia should be brought back into the “European family” and that Monday’s meeting between US President Donald Trump and Russia’s Vladimir Putin is a “wonderful start.” He said he’d held talks with Russian ministers and executives, without giving any further details.
“We hope we will be able to convince other governments with democracy and convincing numbers,” he said. “Vetoes are only a last resort but I am not excluding anything.”
The EU and the US imposed sanctions on Russia and kicked it out of the G-8 group of leading nations in 2014 in response to its annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula. Salvini said that Italy has been the biggest loser from the EU measures. Trump is under pressure to confront his Russian counterpart over Kremlin meddling in the 2016 US presidential election in Helsinki.