Nigel Farage claims Russia was provoked into Ukraine war
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.”
Farage has long been accused by the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat parties of being an apologist for the Russian president.
Earlier this year Rishi Sunak said it was “clearly ridiculous” to blame the west for the war. “Russia conducted an illegal, unprovoked invasion of Ukraine,” the prime minister said. “I’m proud that the UK has stood strongly with Ukraine from the beginning.”
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.
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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?”