Matteo Salvini (; born 9 March 1973) is an Italian politician who has served as Deputy Prime Minister of Italy and Minister of Infrastructure and Transport since 2022. He has been Federal Secretary of Italy's Lega Nord (Northern League) party since December 2013 and an Italian senator since March 2018. Salvini represented Northwestern Italy in the European Parliament from 2004 to 2018. Salvini has been considered a hardline Eurosceptic politician, holding a starkly critical view of the European Union, especially of the euro. He opposes illegal immigration into Italy and the EU as well as the EU's management of asylum seekers. He is also considered one of the main leaders of the populist wave which shook Europe during the 2010s and a member of the neo-nationalist movement, which is a rightist ideology that emphasizes de-globalization, nativist and protectionist stances. During his time serving as Deputy Prime Minister, many international political commentators and newspapers, such as The Guardian, The New York Times, the Financial Times, The Economist, and The Huffington Post, characterized him as a strongman and the most influential politician in Italy after the 2018 elections. Salvini condemned the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. He was previously a strong supporter of Russia's president Vladimir Putin, describing Putin as "the best politician and statesman in the world". Early life Matteo Salvini was born in Milan in 1973, the son of a business executive father and a homemaker mother. In 1985, at the age of 12, he took part in game show Doppio slalom (the Italian version of Blockbusters), hosted by Corrado Tedeschi on Canale 5 and in 1993, at the age of 20, he participated on Il pranzo è servito, hosted by Davide Mengacci, which was broadcast by Rete 4. Salvini studied at the Classical Lyceum "Alessandro Manzoni" in Milan. He later attended the University of Milan where he first studied political science before switching to history. However, he interrupted his studies to start his political career and never graduated. Salvini has sometimes claimed that, as a teenager, he used to visit the left-wing self-managed social centre Leoncavallo. However, in his autobiography, he writes: "I went to the Leoncavallo just one time. For a concert. When I wasn't even interested in politics". An investigation by Jacobin magazine found that according to some witnesses, Salvini in that occasion was already a sympathizer of The League, the same party that was trying to