Nigel Farage has been accused of “parroting Kremlin lines” after saying he would vote against any move by the UK government to deploy British troops to Ukraine.
The leader of Reform UK said he would oppose plans to put British forces on the ground, after the UK and France indicated they would be prepared to send troops to Ukraine as part of a post-war peace arrangement.
Farage’s remarks prompted sharp criticism from senior ministers, who questioned his commitment to Britain’s national security. Cabinet Office minister Pat McFadden said the comments should give voters “pause for thought”, accusing Farage of adopting a pro-Russia stance.
“This guarantee is not just for Ukraine, it’s for the whole of Europe,” he said. “It’s in the British national interest that we do that, and that’s why it’s so concerning to me to see some politicians, like Mr Farage, for example, immediately come out [and] parrot the Kremlin line and say that he wouldn’t support this.”
Farage also faced criticism after choosing to appear on Times Radio instead of attending prime minister’s questions in the House of Commons. During the broadcast, he criticised the Ukraine policy of Keir Starmer and confirmed he would vote against any proposal to deploy UK troops.
“It would be a very interesting vote. I would vote against,” said Farage, one of five Reform UK MPs. “We neither have the manpower nor the equipment to go into an operation that clearly has no ending timeline.”
He added, “If the coalition of the willing was eight, 10, a dozen countries and we could rotate battalions through then I might well say, ‘Yeah, absolutely let’s do it’. As it is, it will be us and the French completely exposed for an unlimited period of time.”
His comments followed a summit involving more than two dozen allied nations supporting Ukraine, alongside US representatives. After talks in Paris, Starmer and French president Emmanuel Macron signed a declaration of intent with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, confirming their willingness to deploy ground troops as part of a peacekeeping effort.
Starmer told MPs that Parliament would be given a full debate and vote before any British forces were sent to Ukraine.
Farage’s position on Russia has increasingly become a line of attack for Labour, particularly following the jailing of a former Reform figure in Wales for taking bribes to promote pro-Russian positions while serving as an MEP.
In the past, Farage has expressed admiration for Vladimir Putin as a political operator and warned against what he described as the West “poking the Russian bear with a stick”. While he has since described the invasion of Ukraine as “immoral, outrageous and indefensible”, critics say his continued opposition to military support undermines that stance.
A Labour spokesperson said Farage’s comments amounted to “the behaviour of Putin’s puppet”.
“Nigel Farage’s equivocation on support for Ukraine is an insult to those who have fought to defend freedom,” they said. “When Farage shrugs at support for Ukraine, a country that has been brutally invaded, people are entitled to ask who he is really speaking for, because this is not patriotism, it’s the behaviour of Putin’s puppet.”
