Nigel Farage has urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to seek a peace deal with Russia, saying “otherwise Ukraine will have no young people”.
The Reform UK leader, who has been criticised for suggesting the West provoked Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, said it was time to rethink Mr Zelenskiy’s aim to retake all the territory lost in President Vladimir Putin’s invasion, and said he believed such a task would be “incredibly difficult”.
Mr Farage made his latest remarks on the war in Ukraine to journalists from The Times and the Daily Mail during a visit to the English Channel to highlight the number of small boat crossings.
His comments came after Julian Mullins KC, the Salisbury constituency candidate and another Reform politician, was booed after telling local voters that Putin was “very good”.
Mullins was asked whether Reform UK would continue to support Ukraine, as have Rishi Sunak and Boris Johnson, the former prime minister who has maintained ties with Zelensky after being ousted from Downing Street.
“War is not about punishing thousands of young people and running them over with tanks and blowing them up because one man holds a different view to yours,” Mullins said on Sunday, drawing boos at his local campaign rally in Salisbury.
“I actually met President Putin and spoke to him for 10 minutes and he was a very nice guy. He’s not some moustachioed Austrian gentleman come to life.”
The constituency Marin hopes to represent is the area where Sergei and Yulia Skripal were poisoned with Novichok.
Mr Skripal and his daughter survived the attack but in late June 2018, Dawn Sturgess, from Wiltshire, and her partner Charlie Rowley were poisoned in Amesbury, eight miles north of Salisbury. Ms Sturgess, 44, died on 8 July that year.
Mr Farage has made it clear he dislikes Putin and opposes the invasion of Ukraine, but has been criticised for making statements that appear to support the Russian president, and for rejecting the possibility of a peace deal.
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Speaking at a rally in Devon on Tuesday, Mr Farage said: “Somehow I’m perceived as an apologist for Putin and of course I’m not. What he’s done in Ukraine is reprehensible.”
“Her Majesty’s Daily Mail has branded me the worst person ever – and not for the first time – simply because, more than a decade ago, I stood up and said that NATO and the European Union’s eastward expansion would be used by dangerous dictators as a pretext for war.
“In Ukraine we said don’t poke the Russian bear with a stick, because if you do that you will have very predictable results.”
