Former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has criticized Nigel Farage for comments suggesting that the West provoked Vladimir Putin into invading Ukraine. Johnson, who has consistently supported Ukraine, accused the Reform UK leader of propagating "Kremlin propaganda."
The confrontation began after Farage stated that NATO and EU expansion had given Putin a pretext for his actions, which he claims he had been warning about for the past decade. Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, Farage insisted he was neither an apologist nor a supporter of Putin and condemned the invasion of Ukraine.
Johnson refuted Farage’s claims, emphasizing that Ukraine's path toward NATO and EU membership was within its sovereign rights, and solely attributed Russian aggression to Putin. Home Secretary James Cleverly also accused Farage of “victim blaming” and echoed Johnson’s sentiment, asserting that the West had made numerous efforts to establish peaceful relations with Russia, only for Putin to choose conflict repeatedly.