British far-right leader Nigel Farage remains under fire after saying that the West “provoked” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in an interview with BBC.
Keir Starmer, the leader of the British Labor Party, which is ahead of the ruling Conservatives before the July 4 elections, condemned the comments of the head of the Eurosceptic Reform UK party, Nigel Farage, about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Sky News reported Starmer’s statement.
Keir Starmer: Farage’s remarks are disgraceful
Nigel Farage’s claim that the West and the expansion of the EU and NATO “provoked” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine prompted questions for Labor leader Keir Starmer. The Labor leader responded by calling these comments “disgraceful”.
“I’ve always been clear that Putin is solely responsible for Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, and we have always supported Ukraine,” Starmer emphasized.
This support for Ukraine was provided by a “united parliament,” Starmer said.
“I have made it my duty to ensure that the opposition is with the government on this issue. And I think that anyone who wants to be a representative in our parliament should clearly realize that regardless of whether it is Russian aggression on the battlefield or online, we stand against this aggression,” Keir Starmer said.
That means standing up for Ukraine, but it also means standing up for our freedom,” Starmer emphasized.
Farage echoed Putin’s “vile justification” for the war
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak also said that the leader of the Eurosceptic Reform UK party, Nigel Farage, was wrong to say that the West “provoked” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Conservative Home Secretary James Cleverly said Mr. Farage was echoing Mr. Putin’s “vile justification” for the war, and Labour branded him “unfit” for any political office.
Farage is acting like Putin’s poodle, said the security minister, Tom Tugendhat.
Asked first about Nigel Farage’s comments that the West “provoked” the Ukraine war, he called these remarks “appeasement” and accused him of repeating Kremlin propaganda.
“During the Cold War, we had a word for people like that. We called them useful idiots. And it sounds to me like Nigel Farage is just Putin’s poodle on this,” he said.
When asked about his own party members’ suggestions that Mr. Farage should join the Tories, Mr. Tugendhat asserts that there is “no place in Parliament or indeed in the Conservative Party for anybody who sides with our enemies.”
Pressed on the issue of whether some Conservatives have been open to the idea of Mr. Farage joining their party, the minister responded, “People who represent the British people in Parliament should put the virtues, interests, and strengths of the British people first.”.
“They shouldn’t undermine that by repeating the propaganda of those who are trying to undermine us,” security minister Tom Tugendhat underlined.
The Reform UK leader Farage told the BBC that “of course” the war was President Vladimir Putin’s fault. But he added that the expansion of the EU and NATO gave him a “reason” to tell the Russian people, “They’re coming for us again.”.
Former Conservative Defense Secretary Ben Wallace, who is not standing in the election, told BBC Radio 4’s Today program that Mr. Farage was like a “pub bore we’ve all met at the end of the bar.”
Farage distanced himself from his past admiration for Putin
Farage questioned his judgment and past statements, in particular when he named Kremlin master Vladimir Putin as the world leader he most admired in 2014.
“I said that I don’t like him as a person, but I admire him as a political figure because he has managed to control Russia,” Farage said.
Since the 1990s, he has argued that the “constant eastward expansion” of the NATO-EU military alliance gives Putin “an excuse [to] tell his Russian people that they will come after us again and start a war.”
However, there is another opinion as to why Putin decided to launch an open, full-scale war to seize Ukraine. Numerous politicians and observers say that the Russian dictator felt supported by right-wing radical politicians in European countries and therefore perhaps hoped that the West would not so widely condemn the invasion and help Ukraine with weapons.
