Russia demands favors from Italy in exchange for coronavirus assistance

 Russian aid at Roma airport

 The Italian daily Linkiesta wrote today that the representative of the ruling Italian party  5-Stars Movement and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Vito Petrocelli, has received a letter from his counterpart in the Russian parliament Duma, Leonid Slutsky, where the latter asks for help in lifting economic sanctions against Russia.

The conservative newspaper writes further that Moscow has sent an invoice for the aid sent, including the military one.

According to the newspaper, in that letter, Slutsky emphasizes Russia's assistance to Italy in the fight against coronavirus and urges the Italian government to put pressure on European countries for Brussels to lift sanctions imposed on Moscow in connection with the Ukraine issue.

"Western countries, which call themselves democratic, have imposed some sort of sanctions on about one-eighth of the world's population and have no plans to mitigate them, not even during the coronavirus pandemic. I urge all politicians to give up from destructive sanctions policy,” Slutsky writes.