Nigel Farage criticised for saying West provoked Ukraine war

Former Nato Secretary General Lord Robertson accused Mr Farage of "parroting the Kremlin Line" and "producing new excuses for the brutal, unprovoked attack".

During the interview, the Reform UK leader claimed Lord Robertson had agreed the war was caused by the expansion of the EU.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4's The World Tonight, the Labour peer denied saying it and described Mr Farage's statement as "complete nonsense".

"Saying that we provoked Russia is like saying that if you buy a burglar alarm, in some way you provoke burglars."

Guy Verhofstadt, a prominent Belgian MEP and frequent critic of Mr Farage, also accused him of repeating "Kremlin talking points".

"In the European Parliament, Farage always defended Putin", he said.

"Every vote for Farage is celebrated in Moscow!"

After the interview aired on Friday, Mr Farage said on X (formerly Twitter) that he was "one of the few figures that have been consistent and honest about the war with Russia".

Alongside the new statement, he reposted a speech in the European Parliament from 2014 in which he called for the West to "stop playing war games with Putin."

Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. It followed the occupation of the Crimea and Donbas regions in 2014.

Ukraine is not a member of the EU or Nato, which is made up of 32 countries across Europe and North America.

However, the country applied to join both blocs following the Russian invasion.

Nato was formed in 1949 by 12 countries, including the US, UK, Canada and France.

After the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991, many Eastern European countries joined including Hungary, Poland and Estonia.

The EU has also expanded since the 1990s, with a number of eastern European countries joining in 2004.