Matteo Salvini has tied the cost of managing frozen Russian assets to a call for less military support for Ukraine and a return to business with Moscow. The Italian deputy prime minister wants a rapid diplomatic settlement and has said that, after the war, Europe should restore economic, trade and cultural links with Russia — including buying its gas again.
Reported on 16 October 2026, the intervention brings three difficult questions into one argument: who should bear the cost and legal risk of frozen Russian assets, how long Europe should support Ukraine, and whether Russian energy can ever again be treated as a normal commercial commodity.
A dispute over assets becomes a dispute over solidarity
Salvini, who is also Italy’s infrastructure minister, criticised the expense of securing and maintaining frozen Russian assets. He said the arrangements cost Italian taxpayers millions of euros and referred to warnings from Belgian authorities about the financial and legal risks of confiscating the assets permanently.
His remarks were reported by the Russian news outlet RBC. The report does not independently establish the amount of Italy’s costs or set out the full substance of the Belgian warnings. The distinction at the heart of the argument is nevertheless clear: freezing an asset prevents its use, while confiscation would permanently take it and potentially redirect it.
That second step can raise questions about property rights, state immunity, liability and future litigation. It is a genuine legal and financial problem, but it does not in itself decide whether European sanctions or support for Ukraine should be reduced. Salvini’s political case depends on making that connection — turning the burden of managing Russian assets into an argument for fewer arms deliveries and a broader change of course.
The risk for the European Union is not simply that one government may adopt a different view. Its policy towards Russia relies on member states acting together. If national costs and commercial interests become the main guide for each capital, maintaining a common position on sanctions, military assistance and security will become harder.
Diplomacy without terms
Salvini has argued for the quickest possible diplomatic resolution to the conflict. That is a broad objective rather than a settlement plan. His proposal does not specify what terms Ukraine should accept, what security guarantees it would receive or who would enforce them.
Those omissions matter. Military and financial support are not only expressions of solidarity; European governments have also treated them as means of strengthening Ukraine’s position in any future negotiations. A decision by individual countries to scale back that support could therefore affect the conditions in which diplomacy takes place, not merely their own budgets.
Salvini’s comments do not establish that the EU is preparing to abandon its current policy. They do expose a pressure point within it. Legal uncertainty over Russian assets, the expense of supporting Ukraine, domestic political concerns and the prospect of renewed trade can all be assembled into a case for a softer line.
For Europe, the question is consequently more demanding than whether negotiations are preferable to fighting. It is whether diplomacy can produce a durable settlement without leaving Ukraine less secure or allowing the use of force to deliver lasting political gains. A call for talks, without conditions attached, leaves that central issue unresolved.
The energy lesson Europe may not want to repeat
Salvini’s most far-reaching proposal concerns the period after the war. He has called for full economic, commercial and cultural relations with Russia to resume, including renewed purchases of Russian gas.
That would not be merely a decision about price or supply. Before the full-scale war against Ukraine, Russian gas held an important place in Europe’s energy system. Contracts, infrastructure and trading links created deep interdependence with a major supplier. When energy became part of the wider confrontation, that interdependence also looked like a vulnerability: a state with economic leverage could affect households, industries and government decisions.
The argument for returning to Russian gas would rest on the promise of restored trade and potentially lower costs. But the end of hostilities would not automatically remove the strategic risk. European governments would still have to consider the reliability of supply, the protection of infrastructure, the diversity of suppliers and the possibility that energy ties could again be used as political pressure.
That is why a postwar reopening of trade would require more than a declaration that relations had been normalised. It would involve a judgement about whether Russia had become a sufficiently reliable partner, and whether Europe could engage without rebuilding the dependence it has spent years trying to reduce.
Salvini’s intervention therefore places immediate economic concerns against a longer-term security calculation. The management of frozen assets is primarily a legal and financial dispute. A return to large-scale Russian energy imports would be a strategic choice — one capable of testing not only Europe’s policy towards Moscow, but also its ability to maintain a united response to the war.
