FALCON POWERS – Nigel Farage, the leader of the UK Reform Party, said that the eastward expansion of the European Union and NATO provoked Russian President Vladimir Putin and pushed him to invade Ukraine.
These statements, made in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) on Friday evening, sparked strong criticism from various British political factions ahead of the elections scheduled for July 4th, in which the right-wing Reform Party is expected to win millions of votes. Farage said he still stands by the statements he made shortly after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, when he wrote on social media that this step was “a result of the expansion of the European Union and NATO to the east.”
He added that he had been expecting a war in Ukraine since 2014.
Farage said in the interview, “It was clear to me that the continued eastward expansion of NATO and the European Union was giving this man (Russian President Vladimir Putin) a reason to tell the people: ‘They are coming after us again’ and push us towards war.”
He added, “We caused this war… of course it was his (Putin’s) fault. He used what we did as a pretext (to launch the war).”
Russia says its special military operation in Ukraine is part of a broader conflict with the West, which it says wants to subdue Moscow. Kyiv and the West reject this and accuse Russia of an unprovoked war.
