Excerpts from Italian Interior Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini's interview with The Washington Post:
Q: Why do you want to lift the sanctions on Russia?
Matteo Salvini: 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?
Salvini: There was a referendum [in Crimea]
Q: It was a fake referendum.
Salvini: [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?
Salvini: Compare it to the fake revolution in Ukraine, which was a pseudo-revolution funded by foreign powers — similar to the Arab Spring revolutions. There are some historically Russian zones with Russian culture and traditions which legitimately belong to the Russian Federation.
From the Kyiv Post:
Andreas Umland: Why did Russia send a Buk missile to eastern Ukraine in July 2014?