It is an open secret that European policy highly depends on that of the United States when it comes to relations with Russia. Hillary Clinton sees Putin as an absolute evil, while Trump has signaled his readiness to develop a dialogue with Moscow and deal with NATO reforms.
In an interview with Sputnik, Germano Dottori of the Rome-based Luiss Guido Carli University gave his thoughts on who is the best future US President for Italy.
"If Hillary Clinton wins, Italy will not have to change its foreign policy, and Rome will continue to severely restrict its political and economic ties with Russia," he said.
In this regard, some of the measures taken by Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni of Italy seem to be out of line with Italy's need to lift the anti-Russian sanctions, which limit trade turnover between the EU and Russia, according to him.
"Europe and Italy are also not interested in the growing instability in the world, something that will take place if Clinton becomes President," Dottori said.
He recalled that during the election campaign, Clinton has focused on discussing Moscow-Washington relations, hoping to use the voters' anti-Russian sentiment to win the elections.
In contrast, Trump has repeatedly called for cooperating with Russia to normalize the geopolitical situation, according to Dottori.
"Although Clinton continues to pay lip-service to developing collaboration with Russia, everyone knows full well that she has other things on her mind.Under the pretext of protecting human rights, she is ready to re-stoke tensions in Ukraine and shift them to Belarus and Armenia," he said.
In this vein, Russian experts say that Italian public opinion has yet to learn to perceive international relations from the point of view of geopolitics.
Right now, both the media and the government in Italy try to tout Hillary Clinton and the United States as an example to follow.
In the event of a Trump victory, they will continue to attack him, as they once attacked Ronald Reagan, and they will describe Trump as the President who is unable to call the shots, the experts concluded.
