- Farage has confronted robust criticism over his feedback on Russia and Ukraine
Nigel Farage was bamboozled by a shock banner of Russian President Vladimir Putin descending from the ceiling at a rally in Walton, Essex this night.
Led By Donkeys, a political marketing campaign group vital of Farage, claimed duty for the act, broadcasting the total unveiling on their Twitter/X web page.
Video confirmed the banner emblazoned with an image of Putin and the phrases ‘I [heart] Putin’ slowly unfolding behind the Reform UK occasion chief as addressed his viewers on the Columbine Centre, some 9 miles from Clacton-on-Sea.
Whereas some cackled at first, others joined calls to ‘rip it down’ as two males struggled to tug the poster from the ceiling.
In a pithy rationalization, Led By Donkeys mentioned on Twitter/X: ‘Nigel Farage says Putin is the world chief he ‘admires essentially the most’ and blames the West for Russia’s unlawful invasion of Ukraine.’
Video confirmed a banner slowly descending behind Farage as he spoke this night
A few of the members of the viewers laughed, earlier than others joined chants to ‘get it down’
Farage has obtained bipartisan criticism for his controversial feedback on Russia, with Boris Johnson late final week saying he was ‘parroting Putin’s lies’ with ‘morally repugnant’ claims.
In a speech shared on Twitter/X on June 24, Farage mentioned feedback made with the BBC’s Panorama during which he mentioned that the enlargement of the EU and NATO had ‘provoked’ Putin into invading Ukraine.
‘George Robertson, the previous Secretary Normal of Nato, mentioned just a few months in the past that the EU’s accession settlement to Ukraine was a mistake that was utilized by Putin,’ he claimed.
Lord Robertson, who headed Nato from 1999 to 2003, accused Mr Farage of speaking ‘complete nonsense’.
Russia occupied and annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.
In an article for the Sunday Telegraph, Mr Farage additionally wrote: ‘His [Putin’s] invasion of Ukraine was immoral, outrageous and indefensible.
‘As a champion of nationwide sovereignty, I imagine that Putin was solely improper to invade the sovereign nation of Ukraine. No person can pretty accuse me of being an appeaser. I’ve by no means sought to justify Putin’s invasion in any means and I am not now.
‘However that does not change the truth that I noticed it coming a decade in the past, warned that it was coming and am one of many few political figures who has been persistently proper and trustworthy about Russia’s Ukraine warfare. In case you poke the Russian bear with a stick, do not be stunned if he responds.’
Sharing the article on X, Mr Johnson wrote: ‘That is nauseating ahistorical drivel and extra Kremlin propaganda. No person provoked Putin. No person ‘poked the bear with a stick’.
‘The individuals of Ukraine voted overwhelmingly in 1991 to be a sovereign and unbiased nation. They had been completely entitled to hunt each Nato and EU membership.’
Russian state TV – rigidly managed by the dictator – jumped on Farage’s feedback and boasted that he was ‘complimentary’ to Russia and had revealed ‘who actually provoked the battle’.
Requested if the Kremlin thought of the Clacton-on-Sea candidate ‘an ally’, Maria Zakharova recommended it did, saying: ‘How [else do] you see the one who tells people who two plus two is 4 or reminds you of the precise time?’
Assistants struggled to tug the banner down from the ceiling and walked off stage
Farage was talking in Walton, Essex this night as Britain prepares to go to the polls
