Italian far-right leader branded a Putinist during visit to Poland
MATTEO SALVINI was branded a “friend” of Vladimir Putin by a Polish mayor when the far-right leader visited a town yesterday to see refugees fleeing the Russian war machine.
Wojciech Bakun challenged Mr Salvini over his alleged pro-kremlin views during a news conference at a train station in Przemysl, where hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have fled.
Mr Bakun confronted Mr Salvini with a T-shirt showing Mr Putin’s face and the words: “Army of Russia”.
The T-shirt was similar to one that the leader of Italy’s Lega party had worn publicly in the past. The furious mayor offered to escort Mr Salvini wearing the T-shirt to a refugee centre “to see what your friend Putin has done”.
Mr Salvini, who has praised Mr Putin in the past as “one of the best statesmen”, walked away after claiming he was in Przemysl, which borders Ukraine, to help refugees.
“We are helping refugees, children, mums, dads from Ukraine,” he said before being jeered by onlookers who called him a buffoon.
Mr Salvini, an ex-deputy prime minister and interior minister, is infamous for his anti-migrant rhetoric about those fleeing Africa or the Middle East.
But he claimed to be in Poland to help Ukrainian “women, girls, mothers and grandmothers”.
“Ukrainians are culturally and morally close to us,” Mr Salvini told the Euractiv website.
The number of refugees fleeing Ukraine reached two million yesterday, with more than half arriving in Poland.
Mr Salvini has denied ever receiving money from Mr Putin in the face of 2019 accusations against his party.