Reform UK Party Leader Nigel Farage Blames West for Ukraine Invasion

Nigel Farage, the right-wing leader of the Reform UK party in Britain, claimed that the invasion of Ukraine by Russian President Vladimir Putin was a direct result of US interference and eastward expansion of NATO.

The remarks, made in an interview with the BBC aired late on Friday, drew strong criticism across the British political spectrum ahead of a July 4 election in which Farage’s Reform UK party is predicted to win millions of votes.

Farage said he stood by comments made shortly after Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, when he posted on social media that the move was a “consequence of EU and NATO expansion”. He said he had been predicting a war in Ukraine as early as 2014.

“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,” Farage said in Friday’s BBC interview.

“We provoked this war … of course it’s his (Putin’s) fault – he’s used what we’ve done as an excuse.”

Russia casts its special military operation in Ukraine as part of a broader struggle with the West, which it says wants to bring Russia to its knees. Kyiv and the West reject this and accuse Russia of waging an illegal war of conquest.

Most Recognizable and Divisive Politician

Farage’s decades of campaigning against Britain’s membership of the EU and mass immigration has made him one of the country’s most recognisable and divisive politicians.

Even though Reform is unlikely to win many seats in parliament, it could split the right-of-centre vote across the country. The party held only one seat in the last parliament, which it gained when a Conservative lawmaker defected.

Farage’s remarks on Ukraine drew immediate condemnation, Reuters reports.

Sunak said Farage was “completely wrong”, accusing him of appeasement that put Britain and its allies’ security at risk. Labour’s defence spokesman John Healey called Farage’s comments disgraceful and labelled him a “Putin apologist”.

Farage later posted on X: “Putin was wrong to invade a sovereign nation, and the EU was wrong to expand eastward. The sooner we realise this, the closer we will be to ending the war and delivering peace.”

Source: Reuters

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