“If the sanctions against Russia are not lifted, Italian companies will lose contracts worth one billion euros. We could find other partners, but it would be a shame to give up on collaboration with Italy”. The message comes clearly from the Russian president Vladimir Putin, on the sidelines of his visit to Expo 2015 in Milan: the policy of sanctions is not useful for anyone, especially for a country like ours which has up to now maintained excellent relations with Moscow.
“We are carrying out many projects in the technological and military fields – Putin also remarked -. The sanctions must be eliminated or modified to support the companies that want to collaborate with us". The Italian premier Matteo Renzi instead, he pointed out that in Europe there are divergent opinions on the issue among the 28 member countries, but that the common goal is to arrive at a shared solution that provides for a normalization of relations between the EU and the Russian Federation. And the solution, on which both leaders agreed, is the integral application of the Minsk peace accords which were supposed to close the Ukrainian crisis, which is still open.
