Peter Walker – The Guardian June 22, 2024
Nigel Farage has said the EU and Nato “provoked” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by expanding eastwards, as the Reform UK leader was challenged over a series of policies and beliefs in a sometimes combative TV interview.
Speaking to BBC’s Panorama on Friday evening, Farage also said Brexit would have benefited the UK economically if he had been running the country, and that many of the Reform candidates criticised for saying offensive things had been “stitched up in the most extraordinary way”.
Challenged on his beliefs over the invasion of Ukraine, and his stated admiration for Vladimir Putin, Farage said he disliked the Russian president personally but “admired him as a political operator” because of the extent of his control over Russia.
On why Putin invaded Ukraine, Farage said: “I stood up in the European parliament in 2014 and I said: ‘There will be a war in Ukraine.’ Why did I say that? It was obvious to me that the ever-eastward expansion of Nato and the European Union was giving this man a reason … to say: ‘They’re coming for us again,’ and to go to war.”
He added: “We provoked this war. Of course it’s his fault, he’s used what we’ve done as an excuse.”
The Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats have long accused Farage of being an apologist for the Russian president.
James Cleverly, the home secretary, criticised Farage’s comments, saying he was “echoing Putin’s vile justification for the brutal invasion of Ukraine”, while the former defence secretary Ben Wallace said the Reform leader was voicing “sympathy” to someone who “deployed nerve agents on the streets of Britain”.
John Healey, the shadow defence secretary, called the comments “disgraceful”, adding that Farage has “shown that he would rather lick Vladimir Putin’s boot than stand up for the people of Ukraine. That makes him unfit for any political office in our country, let alone leading a serious party in parliament.”
Earlier this year Rishi Sunak said it was “clearly ridiculous” to blame the west for the war.
Elsewhere in the interview, one of a series hosted by Nick Robinson with party leaders, Farage accepted that a claim he made saying the UK had moved from being the “world’s seventh-biggest exporter to the world’s fourth-biggest exporter” after Brexit referred only to services.
Asked why exports in goods had not similarly benefited, Farage blamed net zero policies, saying they had “de-industrialised Britain”. On the economic effects of Brexit, he said: “If you put me in charge it’d be very, very different, but of course they didn’t do that did they?”
Challenged over his support at the time for Liz Truss’s disastrous mini-budget, Farage praised it for having “a lot of things here that were pro-growth and pro-business”, while saying it was undermined by not including matched cuts in spending.
Asking about Reform’s own fiscal plans, set out this week in the party’s manifesto, Robinson seemed unconvinced by Farage’s explanations as to how the party would cut public spending enough to make mass tax cuts.
“Well, number one, we will get people off the unemployment register into work,” Farage said. Robinson replied: “That’s not going to raise you £140bn a year. You were on I’m a Celebrity – you should have been on Fantasy Island.”
Farrage is stating the obvious, no news here.
Farrage wants to appear different, but nothing will change. If the UK could be saved, the current Nazis would have done it.
You’re a good man Nigel. Thanks!
Well, he’s half way to speaking Truth.
The politicians criticising him are psychopaths, as straightforward as that.
Every single one is stupid and deranged.
But he is brave.
No other contender in this fixed election is.
Bravo Nigel!!! 👏👏👏
See how the Rothschild Agents running Britain go berserk at hearing the TRUTH! LOL!
Scumbags! Traitors! Jew-Britain! Been controlled by Jewry for 500 years! Even British Royalty has been thoroughly sodomized & soiled by Jew spermatozoa.
we know that only jewUSA/UK was the warmonger from
beginning on with their steady Natod expansion to east +
CIA/MI6/Mossad promoting the Ukrainian nazis to their
atrocities against russian orthodox christians already
Poroshenkov gave green light .
More Commie disinfo. Putin & Russia are in on it along with NATOUkraine. Its a setup to ice whites–‘Whiteocide.’ ZWOG must invent various bogus cover stories for the morons to conceal that reality. All the cabinet members of the Russian Admin are Yids just like Ukraine’s. NATO of course is a Commie Jew operation.
Farage said that his party would increase Black immigration from the Commonwealth because all those people “are British” and stop immigration from Eastern Europe, so he is useless to White people
i am crowleyite too
Why does Farage dislike Putin? And wht does Nigel state obvious. The west has been at war with Russia since 2014 when the minsk 1 and 2 agreements was a sham and 2019 when johnson at the behest of usa told zelensky not to honour the peace agreement. Putin has over 80% approval rating and in 20 odd years brouht Russia’s economy from out of the gutter to number 4 in the world.
AS AN X BRIT ALL I CAN SAY IS TO ALL OF YOU WHO CAN’T SEE THE WOOD FOR THE TREES. NIGEL FARAGE IS THE DONALD TRUMP OF ENGLAND.
YOU LIMEY’S GOT TO REALIZE WE LIVE AMONGST FOOLS.
The Truth is Kryptonite to Jewry.
2014 saw the overthrow of Ukraine by the Jew US State Dept. which then installed Jews to run Ukraine. JEWS, not Nazis, (which have mostly been killed). They then commenced to kill ethnic Russians in the Donbas & Lugansk, (who didn’t accept the Jew Coup of 2014) while building up the Ukie military for 8 years on Russia’s border.
Only a Jew could come up with the oft-repeated horse manure Lie of “Russia’s UNPROVOKED attack on Ukraine”!
Jew Lies carry a ton of Chutzpah.
Nigel Farage threw a bone to Sunak and his ilk when he said he disliked Putin. Clearly this was to dampen down the row he caused for telling the truth. The vast majority of thinking people know this was a planned incursion of NATO into Russian areas of influence to provoke Putin and Russia. Everyone knows this except every posturing bought and paid fors of Britain and every western government. The psycos in charge of NATO and its puppet member nations want a war to divide up Russia, ruin its economy and dull its claws, sort of like was done to Germany so many decades ago.
It’s amazing how Sunak & Co. can drag out these long discredited canards.
The 2014 Maidan was a NATO operation which overthrew the legitimate government of the Ukraine, using the Azov Nazis, ably assisted by Victoria Nuland and her bag of cookies (and who knows what was in them.) along with a visit from then VP Biden, encouraging people to revolt.
And then this one:
“. . . former defence secretary Ben Wallace said the Reform leader was voicing “sympathy” to someone who “deployed nerve agents on the streets of Britain”.
Yes – streets a stone’s throw away from Porton Down – and we all know what goes on there.
Go on speaking truth to power Nigel, but stay out of small planes – and hiking tours in the Lake District.
@ evilc, Spot on, couldn’t have put it better myself.
Looking at the expression on Nigel Farage’s face sometimes, he looks like the Joker in Batman!🤣