Patriotism for Sale: The UK Far Right’s Russian Connection
Last month it was reported that former Reform leader for Wales, Nathan Gill, had admitted taking bribes to make statements in favour of Russia while being a Member of the European Parliament.
Gill took money from Oleg Voloshyn – a man once described by the US government as a “pawn” of Russian secret services. He made speeches in the European parliament, statements to a TV channel and arranged an event with a pro-Russian politician. Statements included accusing the Ukrainian state of mistreating two TV channels, which were reportedly linked to Viktor Medvedchuk, a man with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, and were taken off air in 2021.
Reform UK has tried to distance itself from Gill, who served as an MEP for UKIP and the Brexit Party, both led by Nigel Farage. But such distancing is unconvincing, not least because Farage had previously praised Gill as “honest, hard-working and loyal.”
“I have worked closely with Nathan Gill as leader of UKIP Wales,” Farage said in 2016. The bribery counts relate to incidents in 2018-19, just two years later.
That a UK politician, a member of the party currently leading the polls (and the news agenda) has been revealed to have taken bribes to make statements in favour of Russia – at a time when Russia had illegally annexed chunks of Ukraine and was killing and attempting to kill people on British soil – is alarming.
But it tells us something, too, about the far right and its relationship with Russia. Farage himself has praised Putin in the past, saying that he “admires” him as a political operator and warning, in the run-up to the full-scale invasion, that it would be unwise to “poke the bear” – a suggestion that Europe and Ukraine was culpable for Russian aggression. Farage has warned that Zelenskiy should “seek peace” and attacked Boris Johnson for rejecting the prospect of a peace deal, something which a source close to Zelenskiy said was an example of how “the virus of Putinism, unfortunately, infects people”.
Before the full-scale invasion, Farage appeared on the now banned TV channel RT (Russia Today), a propaganda arm of Putin’s regime that has long spread disinformation. And his Brexit project was looked on favourably by Russia, with questions remaining over how far Russia sought to influence the vote.
Reform UK disputes the fact that it is a far right party, although it has been called that by the leading anti-racist organisation HOPE not hate.
More broadly, the British far right has ties to, or looks favourably on, Russia and Putin’s regime. The far influencer Tommy Robinson (real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) has, said HOPE not hate, become “Putin’s useful idiot”. Like Farage, he appeared on RT, where in 2020 he denied Assad war crimes in Syria, a Putinist line. Since the start of the full-scale invasion he has repeated and amplified pro-Putin disinformation about the war.
Even further to the right of Robinson are Patriotic Alternative, who support Russia’s war in Ukraine on the basis that Putin is fighting against “gender ideology”. Leader Mark Collett regularly posts disinformation and conspiracy theories about the full-scale invasion, blames Ukraine and NATO for Russian aggression, and wrote in the days following the start of the big war that “Western liberal democracy is a greater threat to any Eastern European nation than Russia.”
None of this is really a surprise but it is worth noting. The UK far right claims they are the real patriots of Britain, while praising the country’s enemies. Now, Reform has been exposed for taking bribes in order to make favourable statements about Russia, the same year Russian operatives attempted to assassinate Sergei Skripal and killed Dawn Sturgess in the UK, and while they were committing crimes against humanity in occupied Crimea and Ukraine. We cannot allow Farage and his party to succeed in distancing themselves from this criminality committed by a senior figure in their ranks.
It must be called out, time and time again.
Thanks to Ukraine Solidarity Campaign for permission to reprint this article