What is Nigel Farage up to? The Reform leader has doubled down over the weekend on his claim that the west helped provoke Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Following his comments to the BBC on Friday, he then wrote a piece in the Telegraph on Saturday arguing that ‘What I have been saying for the past ten years is that the west has played into Putin’s hands, giving him the excuse to do what he wanted to do anyway.’ It prompted a torrent of cross-party criticism, with both Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer calling his remarks ‘disgraceful.’
Such was the storm unleashed by Farage that even Kyiv’s leaders now seem to be getting involved. The Mail on Sunday splashed on claims that a source in President Zelensky’s office has accused Farage of being infected by the ‘virus of Putinism’. The Ukrainian presidency told the BBC that it will not be putting out an official statement on Farage’s comments. But following Farage’s interview on Friday, a source in the presidential office reportedly warned the Corporation about the ‘virus of Putinism and the rise of war propaganda’, adding: ‘The task of civilised humanity is to fight this virus in the bud.’
An enraged Farage is now threatening to sue the Mail newspaper group, writing on Twitter/X on Sunday night that the Zelensky claim was ‘totally untrue’ and that has now ‘instructed Carter Ruck to deal with it.’ He added that:
Tomorrow’s Daily Mail are so desperate to smear Reform that they have now contacted the Russian Foreign Ministry and goaded them into a supposed quote from someone in Sergey Lavrov’s office calling me an ‘ally’. That a UK newspaper group is actively collaborating with the Kremlin to protect their dying Conservative party is an absolute scandal. The British people will see through this act of utter desperation.
With the Mail group now under attack, who better to come to their aid than their superstar columnist? Following Farage’s legal threat, Boris Johnson wrote a 150-word rebuttal of the Reform leader’s Telegraph article which he called ‘nauseating ahistorical drivel and more Kremlin propaganda’. The former Prime Minister declared that ‘the people of Ukraine voted overwhelmingly in 1991 to be a sovereign and independent country. They were perfectly entitled to seek both Nato and EU membership. There is only one person responsible for Russian aggression against Ukraine – both in 2014 and 2022 – and that is Putin.’ He concluded:
To try to spread the blame is morally repugnant and parroting Putin’s lies. It is bizarre that the author should also suggest we now reduce our support for Ukraine, when the solution to the conflict is in fact clear – the Ukrainians need to win, and to repel Putin’s invasion. They can and they will. The problem in the last 30 years has not been western provocation but western weakness in the face of Russian aggression – a weakness exemplified by this article.
Ouch. That ought to put pay to an improbable Johnson-Farage post-election pact…
Comments