UK Reform leader Nigel Farage insists West provoked Putin

Nigel Farage’s comments made during a BBC interview have been condemned by British political and senior military figures.

During The Panorama Interview on Friday, Nigel Farage said he admired Russian leader Vladimir Putin because he had ‘managed to take control of running Russia’. Picture: BBC via Getty Images

Nigel Farage has claimed that the West “provoked” Russia to invade Ukraine.

The Reform leader doubled down on claims he made at the start of the war during a BBC interview. He insisted that President Vladimir Putin’s invasion was the “consequence” of expansion by the EU and Nato.

He added, however, that he was not a supporter of the Russian leader and merely admired him as a “political operator” because he had “managed to take control of running Russia”.

Farage told a BBC Panorama election special: “We provoked this war. Of course it’s his fault [but] he’s used what we’ve done as an excuse.”

Under questioning from Nick Robinson, he said: “It was obvious to me that the ever-eastward expansion of NATO and the European Union was giving this man a reason to his Russian people to say, ‘They’re coming for us again’ and to go to war.

“I’m the only person in British politics that predicted what would happen – and of course everyone said I was a pariah for daring to suggest it. My judgment has been way ahead of everybody else’s in understanding this.”

British Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, on the campaign trail for the July 4 elections, said Farage’s comments were “disgraceful”, adding that Putin “bears sole responsibility” for “Russian aggression” in Ukraine, the BBC reported.

Starmer said the Labour Party had always stood behind Ukraine and this was a united stance across parliament.

“Anybody who wants to stand to be a representative in our parliament should be really clear that whether it’s Russian aggression on the battlefield or online, that we stand against that aggression,” he said.

Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said what Farage said was “completely wrong” and only played into Putin’s hands. Mr Sunak, the BBC reported, said Putin was behind the release of nerve agents on the streets of Britain. Farage’s kind of appeasement was “dangerous for Britain’s security” as well as allies and emboldened Putin further, Sunak said.

Farage’s comments were condemned by senior military figures. They accused the Reform candidate for Clacton in Essex of “playing directly into Putin’s hands”.

Ben Wallace, the former defence secretary who was an officer in the British Army, said Farage was expressing “sympathy” for a dictator who “deployed nerve agents on the streets of Britain”. He added: “Farage constantly lectures everyone about sovereignty but is happy to placate a dictator. He too often shows an unhealthy relationship with the Kremlin’s talking points. He is more Chamberlain than Churchill.”

Colonel Philip Ingram, a former army intelligence officer, told Mail Online: “Putin will be smiling to himself seeing his work being done. Farage is a convenient mouthpiece for disinformation and a danger to our security.”

Farage also said he admired elements of the Liz Truss mini-budget, which he described at the time as “the best Conservative budget since the 1980s”.

Pressed on whether he still believed this, he said her “thinking was right” but the “timing was appalling”.

He added: “She wanted to change corporation tax back to a more sensible level. There were a lot of things here that were pro-growth and pro-business. The one big mistake she made, she didn’t have any cuts in spending.

“What was interesting about that was the day before the budget, the Bank of England raised interest rates half a per cent. So some of the thinking was right, the delivery was wrong, the timing was appalling.”

Farage was also pressed on Reform’s manifesto pledges including plans to raise the income tax threshold to £20,000 ($38,000) and scrap net zero targets.

The Reform leader was asked whether he stood by comments that the King was “stupid” and an “eco-loony”.

He replied: “He wasn’t the King then and I can’t speak ill of the monarch obviously. But he did used to say carbon dioxide was a pollutant which I thought was a very stupid comment.”

Asked if he believed the King was wrong he replied: “No, no, the King is wrong to say CO2 is a pollutant, that is wrong, clearly.”

Farage said his opposition to net zero was not climate denial but about the fact that Britain risked exporting its emissions overseas. “Our steelworks close, where do they go? India,” he said.

“The same steel gets produced in India under lower environmental standards and then shipped back to us.

“Globally by closing those steel plants, the amount of CO2 put into the air has gone up. All we’ve done is to export the emissions.”

He added that the UK should instead be putting its efforts into nuclear power so the country could have “electricity production that produces zero carbon”.

The Times