Now Nigel Farage suggests Zelensky ought to make peace with Putin

Ukrainians should hold peace talks with Russia before all their young soldiers are killed, Nigel Farage suggested yesterday.

In an escalation of his comments on the war, the Reform UK leader said he was ‘sceptical’ about Ukraine winning the war and said efforts should instead switch to discussing a peace deal.

He criticised former prime minister Boris Johnson for supporting a Ukrainian victory, which he described as ‘extraordinary’ given the casualty numbers.

Asked what a peace deal looked like in Ukraine, he is reported to have said: ‘What it looks like is not rejecting a peace deal, which Johnson very clearly did, for his own reasons. 

‘How many people have died as a result of that, I don’t know. Johnson… it’s as if he wants both sides to fight to the death. 

‘Given we’ve got up to a million battle casualties, I find it extraordinary.’

He said ‘some attempt to broker negotiations between these two sides needs to happen’.

Asked if he would be willing to see Zelenksy cede ground, Farage told The Times: ‘That’s his choice. No one is even talking about peace. 

‘All we are talking about is ‘Ukraine is going to win’. Really? I’m pretty sceptical about that.’

Asked about Mr Zelensky wanting to reclaim all the territory taken by Russia, the Telegraph reported Mr Farage as having said: ‘Well, there may be no young men left in Ukraine.’

He called for the Royal Marines to be deployed to pick up migrants in the Channel and return them to France. 

He also said the UK should cut off further payments to France if its warships continue to act as a ‘taxi service’ escorting dinghies into UK waters.

It comes as it was revealed a string of Reform candidates have praised Vladimir Putin and expressed sympathy for his invasion of Ukraine. 

Julian Malins KC, 74, the party’s candidate in Salisbury, claimed he met Putin and that he ‘seemed very good’.

According to the Salisbury Journal, he told a hustings on Sunday that he had a ‘ten-minute chat’ with Putin, adding: ‘He is not the Austrian gentleman with a moustache come alive again.’ 

Ian Gribbin, Reform candidate in Bexhill and Battle, said on the Unherd website in January 2022 before the invasion of Ukraine: ‘Manifest promises were broken, especially those intangibles: that it would be unwise to demoralise further a collapsed empire.

‘In this Russia/Putin has shown a maturity of which we can only dream of.’

In a post a month later, he added: ‘Putin is a master of Realpolitik… if only the West had politicians of his class.’

The party’s candidate for the City of Durham, Mark Belch, said in an X post last month he wouldn’t have ‘given a penny’ to Mr Zelensky, adding that he was a ‘dangerous corrupt oligarch’.

Rowland O’Connor, the candidate for North Cornwall, shared an X post in April claiming that it was ‘the biggest lie’ that ‘Nato is a defensive alliance’.

Andrew Banwell, standing in Thornbury and Yate, shared an X post in March claiming Putin was ‘not wrong’ to say ‘the West is run by Satanic paedophiles’.

And Job West, Reform’s candidate in South Derbyshire, posted a video in May claiming the US, UK and Israel were ‘engineering World War III through Nato’.

It comes amid the row over Mr Farage’s comments that the West provoked Russia’s invasion by allowing eastern European countries to join the EU and Nato. 

Mr Farage, who has stressed he dislikes Putin and opposes the invasion, has repeated the claim several times in recent days. 

Reform was contacted for comment.