22 June 2024 • 5:22pm

Nigel Farage has defied criticism relating to his claims that the West provoked Russia’s invasion of Ukraine despite the mounting backlash.

The Reform UK leader has been criticised by Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer after he said the “ever-eastward expansion of Nato and the EU” had given Vladimir Putin a reason to justify war.

Mr Sunak said he was “completely wrong” while Sir Keir said he was “disgusted” with the comments. Mr Farage also faced accusations of being an “apologist” for Putin from Sir Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader. 

However, writing in The Telegraph Mr Farage dismissed the furore and doubled down on his position. 

He said: “I am not and never have been an apologist or supporter of Putin. His invasion of Ukraine was immoral, outrageous and indefensible. As a champion of national sovereignty, I believe that Putin was entirely wrong to invade the sovereign nation of Ukraine.

“But that doesn’t change the fact that I saw it coming a decade ago, warned that it was coming and am one of the few political figures who has been consistently right and honest about Russia’s Ukraine war.”

Mr Farage added: “What I have been saying for the past 10 years is that the West has played into Putin’s hands, giving him the excuse to do what he wanted to do anyway.”

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Even the SNP comes to Ukraine’s defence:

John Swinney calls Nigel Farage a ‘traitor’ over Ukraine war comments

Scottish First Minister John Swinney has described Nigel Farage as a “traitor to the interests of the people of these islands” following his comments about the war in Ukraine.

In an interview with the BBC, Mr Farage said “we provoked this war” and drew a link between the war and the expansion of Nato and the European Union.

But responding to the Reform UK leader, Mr Swinney told journalists on a campaign stop in Edinburgh: “I this these are some of the most appalling remarks I’ve heard, literally in my life, and they’re of an extraordinary degree of absurdity and danger.

“Vladimir Putin has voluntarily invaded a sovereign country and nobody provoked him to, nobody was a threat to Vladimir Putin.

“Nigel Farage has confirmed what all of us have suspected of him – that he is a dangerous man.

“And that he is a traitor to the interests of the people of these islands, and the people of Ukraine.”

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Predictably Georgi G’Allah-Weih comes in with Farage :

George Galloway defends Nigel Farage over Ukraine claims

George Galloway has defended Nigel Farage after he claimed the West was responsible for Russia invading Ukraine.

The leader of the Workers Party of Britain criticised the “absolute hysteria” that has arisen owing to “Nigel Farage telling the truth about the war in Ukraine”.

Writing on X, formerly Twitter, Mr Galloway said: 

The absolute hysteria over @Nigel_Farage telling the truth about the #Ukraine war is the shape of things to come. The Establishment narrative over this and a hundred other things is a Potemkin Village – paper thin! If he and I are in the next parliament expect fireworks!

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Farage’s article in full :

The West’s errors in Ukraine have been catastrophic. I won’t apologise for telling the truth

Until we admit what we got wrong, we will never have a lasting peace

NIGEL FARAGE 22 June 2024 • 3:44pm

blame me for telling the truth about Putin’s war in Ukraine. Facing up the facts about the mistakes of the past has to be the first step towards the peaceful future we all want to see.

In my BBC Panorama interview on Friday, Nick Robinson outrageously accused me of “echoing” Russian president Vladimir Putin’s excuses for his invasion of Ukraine. The political establishment has since been busy echoing that slur.

So, let me set the record straight. I am not and never have been an apologist or supporter of Putin. His invasion of Ukraine was immoral, outrageous and indefensible. As a champion of national sovereignty, I believe that Putin was entirely wrong to invade the sovereign nation of Ukraine. Nobody can fairly accuse me of being an appeaser. I have never sought to justify Putin’s invasion in any way and I’m not now.

But that doesn’t change the fact that I saw it coming a decade ago, warned that it was coming and am one of the few political figures who has been consistently right and honest about Russia’s Ukraine war.

What I have been saying for the past 10 years is that the West has played into Putin’s hands, giving him the excuse to do what he wanted to do anyway.

Back in 2014, when the EU first offered Ukraine an accession agreement, I said in a speech in the European Parliament that “there will be a war in Ukraine”. Why? Because the expansion of NATO and the European Union was giving Putin a pretext he would not ignore.

As I have made clear on multiple occasions since then, if you poke the Russian bear with a stick, don’t be surprised if he responds. And if you have neither the means nor the political will to face him down, poking a bear is obviously not good foreign policy.

Even though he was on the radio last night (Friday) denying it, former Labour cabinet minister George Robertson, who later became head of NATO, has also recently made clear that Putin’s fears about EU expansion helped cause the war. He is on the record – twice – in his New Statesman article in May and a BBC interview in February of this year.

And it’s not only Ukraine. The West’s diplomatic blunder over how to tackle Putin’s mix of paranoia and assertiveness was just one of many disastrous interventions in the two decades since Tony Blair’s Labour government joined the catastrophic invasion of Iraq (which I opposed).

Western statesmen have too often tried to dress up in white cowboy hats and pose as heroes saving the world. We have witnessed vanity taking the place of reason in foreign policy, and the result has been to destabilise a series of countries with dire effects both there and here.

We should recall how, around the same time as tensions with Russia were being ramped up, US President Obama and his secretary of state Hilary Clinton, with the full support of David Cameron’s Tory government, reduced Libya to a smoking ruin in order to remove the dictator Gaddafi.

I have consistently pointed out the dangers of the West’s foreign policy. It gives me no pleasure to say that I have been proved right and that the Tories and Labour have been wrong.

Of course I understand that many British people strongly sympathise with the resilient Ukrainians. The fog of war always makes it hard to be sure of casualty figures, but US intelligence sources suggested last year that almost half a million had been killed or wounded on both sides in the conflict. It is a meat grinder for both Ukrainian and Russian soldiers, with no apparent end to the slaughter in sight.

The UK alone has pledged £12.5 billion to Ukraine in military support and other aid. The war has also had a drastic impact on the European and British economies, contributing to the big jump in everything from energy costs and food prices to interest rates, intensifying the cost-of-living crisis that has hit millions of hard-pressed British households.

There is no easy solution to the war. But facing up to the truth about the causes and consequences must be a start. That is why I simply want to tell it as it is, and have done for a decade. Those slanderers who claim that telling the truth makes me a “mouthpiece for Putin” only reveal the weakness of their own case.

There is an issue of British democracy here, too. The escalation of British support for the war in Ukraine has not even been an issue in this election campaign, since the old parties all agree with it. Am I, as the leader of Reform UK, a party that is now running second in major polls, not even allowed to question this political conformism?

What real democratic choice could there be, if we are all expected to say the same thing and libelled if we refuse to do so? At election time, more than ever, free speech remains the lifeblood of our democracy.

My question for voters is this. Who would you trust most to shape the future of UK foreign policy? Me, who saw the disastrous wars in Ukraine and elsewhere coming down the line and repeatedly warned against them? Or the establishment parties who helped to make them happen?