Defence Minister Guido Crosetto on Friday told Deputy Premier and Transport Minister Matteo Salvini not to judge the whole of Ukraine on the basis of a corruption scandal.
Salvini, the leader of the right-wing League party, expressed fears that buying US weapons to supply them to Kyiv could feed graft after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky this week sacked his energy and justice ministers over an alleged money-laundering scheme.
"I understand Matteo Salvini's concerns but I don't judge a country on two corrupt people, just like the Americans and the British who landed in Sicily (in World War II) did not judge Italy by the presence of the mafia but came to help other Italians, the honest ones," said Crosetto, a leading member of Premier Giorgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy (FdI) party, said on the sidelines of the E5 defence meeting in Berlin.
"That is exactly what we are also doing in Ukraine - trying to help the civilians who suffer 93% of Russian attacks".
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