“Brexit” key figure Nigel Farage claims that “we have provoked this war”
Uriel Araujo
InfoBrics
Inconvenient facts such as the significant presence of neo-Nazism amongst the ranks of Ukrainian military personnel especially within the Azov regiment), or, say, minority rights in Ukraine or NATO’s aggressive expansion, must be whitewashed or minimized or else “Russian propaganda!”.
Speaking to BBC’s “Panorama” on Friday evening, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage claimed the West provoked Russia into going into a full-scale military campaign against the Ukrainian government. This has triggered very strong-worded responses and has increased tensions in the British pre-election political climate. In Europe as well there is now a lot of alarmism about the rise of the “far-right” and supposed “Kremlin agents”.
In early 2022, Farage posted a comment on social media claiming the then-recent military campaign in Ukraine was “a consequence of EU and NATO expansion.” During the aforementioned Friday interview, the politician was asked whether he still held such views today, to which he replied that he had been warning about the risks of such an expansion for “decades”. He made the caveat that, “of course, it’s his [Putin’s] fault”, and added that “he’s used what we’ve done as an excuse.” Farage also said: “we have provoked this war.” The Eurosceptic politician and broadcaster claimed he dislikes Russian President Vladimir Putin personally, but admires him “as a political operator” only.
In addition, Farage summarized his view on the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian conflict: “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 [Putin] a reason … to say: ‘They’re coming for us again,’ and to go to war.”
So, basically he said NATO played into the Russian President’s hands by providing him with a justification to carry out a military campaign in Ukraine. Such remarks (albeit critical of eastward NATO’s expansion) can hardly be described as “pro-Putin” or anything like that. The British politician in fact accused Putin of having used such an expansion as an “excuse”.
