Matteo Salvini who is the leader of the Italian far-right League party, has come out to openly spark some harsh debates by revealing that it has been proven that the unprecedented sanctions which the West had imposed on Russia over the Ukraine invasion hadn’t been working at all.
Read Also; Russia Finally Halts Gas Supplies To Germany, Blocks Pipe
“Several months have passed and people are paying two, three, even four times more for their bills,” he told Rtl radio. “And after seven months, the war continues and Russian Federation coffers are filling with money.
“Are the sanctions working? No. Today, those who have been sanctioned are winners and those who put the sanctions in place are on their knees,” he tweeted the day earlier.
“It’s evident that someone in Europe has made a bad calculation. It is essential to rethink the strategy to save jobs and businesses in Italy,” he said.
Skyrocketing energy prices since the start of the war in Ukraine have also wreaked some economic pain on countries in the European Union which before the war had been reliant on Russia for a large chunk of its gas supplies.
Following Salvini’s comments, Enrico Letta, leader of the Democratic Party and one of his main adversaries ahead of parliamentary elections on September 25 retorted on Twitter: “I think (Russian President Vladimir) Putin couldn’t have said it better.”
In another report, the Russian government has put out an open statement that stated that it has actually halted all gas deliveries which were being made to Germany through a key pipeline for an indefinite period after announcing on Friday that it had found problems in a key piece of equipment, a new development that will worsen Europe’s energy crisis.
Gazprom which is the Russian gas giant had announced on Friday that the Nord Stream pipeline due to reopen at the weekend would remain shut until a turbine is repaired.
In a statement, Gazprom indicated it had discovered “oil leaks” in a turbine during a planned three-day maintenance operation.