Nigel Farage claims Russia was provoked into war in Ukraine | Nigel Farage

Nigel Farage has said the EU and NATO “provoked” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine through their eastward expansion. The Reform Party UK politician was challenged on a number of his political views and opinions in a sometimes combative television interview.

In an interview with the BBC’s Panorama programme on Friday evening, Farage also said that Britain had benefited economically from Brexit under his leadership and that many of the reform candidates who were criticised for their offensive comments had been “staged in the most extraordinary way”.

When asked about his views on the invasion of Ukraine and his stated admiration for Vladimir Putin, Farage said that he did not like the Russian president personally but “admired him as a political actor” because of his great influence in Russia.

Asked why Putin invaded Ukraine, Farage replied: “I stood up in the European Parliament in 2014 and 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 gave this man a reason… to say, ‘They’re coming back for us’ and to go to war.”

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

Farage has long been accused by the Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats of being an apologist for the Russian president.

Earlier this year, Rishi Sunak said it was “patently ridiculous” to blame the West for the war. “Russia carried out an illegal, unprovoked invasion of Ukraine,” the prime minister said. “I am proud that the UK stood firmly with Ukraine from the outset.”

Elsewhere in the interview, part of a series of interviews with party leaders hosted by Nick Robinson, Farage acknowledged that his statement that Britain had gone from being the “seventh-largest to the fourth-largest exporter in the world” after Brexit referred only to services.

Asked why goods exports had not benefited in a similar way, Farage blamed the net zero policy, saying it had “de-industrialised Britain”. On the economic impact of Brexit, he said: “If you put me in charge of that, it would be very, very different, but of course you didn’t, did you?”