Nigel Farage of Reform UK blames NATO and EU for “provocation” of Ukraine war

The expansion of NATO and the European Union into Eastern Europe is responsible for the Russian invasion of Ukraine, says Nigel Farage, leader of the populist Reform UK Party, whose poll ratings are rising sharply.

In a BBC interview on Friday, Farage reiterated his previous comments pointing the finger at the West, saying it was “obvious” that allowing more Eastern European countries to join the pacts would provoke Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Conservative Home Secretary James Cleverly said Farage was “repeating Putin’s vile justification for the brutal invasion of Ukraine”. Labour’s shadow defence secretary John Healey branded the comments “scandalous” and called Farage a “Putin apologist”.

Farage’s party has capitalised on anti-immigration sentiment to gain in the polls ahead of the July 4 election at the expense of the ruling Conservatives, dividing the right-wing electorate and polls showing Sunak’s Tories heading for a historic defeat by Keir Starmer’s opposition Labour Party.

Farage’s comments follow a series of controversies surrounding reform candidates, one of whom apologized by saying Britain “should have accepted Hitler’s offer of neutrality.”

In the BBC interview, Farage was asked about his previous comments in which he suggested that he admired Putin and that the West had provoked the Russian president.

“Why did I say that? It was obvious to me that the ever eastward expansion of NATO and the European Union gave this man a reason to tell his Russian people, ‘They’re coming back to get us’ and to go to war,” he said, according to a transcript of the interview.

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Since the 1990s, numerous Eastern European countries have joined the defense pact and the EU, including Poland and Hungary.

“I am the only person in British politics who predicted what was going to happen and of course everyone said I was a pariah for daring to suggest that,” he said.

Farage said he “does not like Putin” but reiterated that he “admires him as a political actor because he has managed to take over the leadership of Russia.”

“We provoked this war,” Farage said. “Of course it is his fault. He used what we did as an excuse.”