Polish mayor hands Salvini Putin T-shirt to protest visit to Ukraine border

When Matteo Salvini visited a Polish town near the border with Ukraine today, the mayor presented the Italian far-right leader with a Vladimir Putin T-shirt of the type he was once pictured wearing in Moscow.

The protest was intended to highlight the contradiction between Salvini’s previous support for the Kremlin and his current proclaimed interest in helping Ukrainians forced to flee Russia’s invasion.

The former Italian deputy prime minister has come to Poland on what he says is a trip to find ways of helping Ukrainian refugees and the countries accepting them. Around 60% of the almost two million people who have fled Ukraine since Russia’s invasion have crossed into Poland.

“Helping these women, girls, mothers, grandmothers is a duty for all of us,” Salvini wrote on Facebook after reaching Warsaw, where he held a meeting at the Italian embassy. Paolo Grimoldi

“We thank Poland for hosting real refugees fleeing the real war and not, for example, those from Bangladesh,” said Paolo Grimoldi, an MP from Salvini’s party, quoted by Polish state TV. “Some on the left should apologise to the Polish government for past accusations that it closed the door to refugees.”

“Ukrainians are culturally and morally close to us,” added Salvini, in quotes carried by Euroactiv. The far-right leader has previously campaigned against receiving immigrants and asylums seekers from Africa and the Middle East, and sought to enforce such a policy during a brief stint as interior minister.

This afternoon, Salvini travelled to Przemyśl, a town near the Ukraine border that has been a primary arrival point for refugees. However, when he arrived he was not given a warm welcome by the mayor Wojciech Bakun.

Standing in front of the railway station – where thousands of refugees have been arriving – Bakun presented Salvini with a T-shirt featuring an image of Vladimir Putin and the words “Army of Russia”. The Italian far-right leader was once famously pictured wearing the same type of T-shirt during a visit to Moscow.

“I would like us to go to the border and to a refugee centre, so you can see what your friend Putin did,” Bakun told Salvini, reports Gazeta Wyborcza. Salvini then walked away from the press conference while Italian journalists “started shouting insults at him in Italian”, writes local news service Nowiny24.

Bakun later told the media that he found Salvini’s trip “impudent”. Instead of now “pretending that he wants to help”, Salvini should have earlier “helped by criticising and stigmatising people like Putin”.

In 2014, Salvini supported Putin’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine and in 2018 he called for the EU to lift sanctions on Russia, including allowing it to return to the G8. In 2017, his Lega party signed a cooperation agreement with Putin’s United Russia party.

Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, which holds a strongly anti-Russian position, has faced criticism in recent times for seeking to build an alliance with various right-wing and far-right leaders – including Marine Le Pen and Viktor Orbán, as well as Salvini – seen as sympathetic towards the Kremlin.

PiS has argued, however, that by creating such links it is better able to explain to those leaders the dangers posed by Russia and to persuade them to take a tougher line against the Kremlin. At a summit in January, members of the alliance agreed a statement condemning Russian aggression, but it was never published by Le Pen’s party.

Main image credit: Krzysztof Cwik / Agencja Wyborcza.pl

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.