Ukraine has no hope against Russia on the battlefield due to a lack of manpower, British politician Nigel Farage stated on Tuesday.
The Reform UK leader has been embroiled in a row with Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky and former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson after arguing that NATO expansion in Europe contributed to the ongoing hostilities.
Farage defended his position on the BBC’s Panorama program last week, prompting Zelensky’s office to claim that the politician is infected with a “virus of Putinism.” Johnson branded Farage’s remarks “nauseating ahistorical drivel” and “Kremlin propaganda,” calling him “morally repugnant.”
Speaking to British journalists on Tuesday, Farage took aim at his critics, in particular Johnson, who he accused of pushing Zelensky into rejecting a peace deal with Russia in 2022.
The former Tory leader “very clearly did [that] for his own reasons. How many people have died as a result of that, I don’t know,” Farage said. He estimated that there have been “a million battle casualties” in the conflict.
Considering the heavy losses, “there may be no young men left in Ukraine” to achieve Kiev’s stated goal of defeating Russia, Farage pointed out. He said it was Zelensky’s choice whether to cede territory to stop the bloodshed and lamented that “no one is even talking about peace.”
“All we are talking about is ‘Ukraine is going to win’. Really? I’m pretty skeptical about that,” Farage added.
“I just think some attempt to broker negotiations between these two sides needs to happen,” the politician said, after citing his past opposition to Western military campaigns in Iraq and Libya.
Farage issued a similar rebuke during a campaign rally in Maidstone on Monday, when he suggested that Johnson is the one who is “morally repugnant.” He showed supporters a Daily Mail article from 2016 featuring a pro-Brexit speech by Johnson, a key figure in the campaign.
In it, Johnson blamed the EU’s expansionist foreign policy for stoking tensions with Russia in Ukraine. He was accused of being an “apologist” for Russian President Vladimir Putin for the remarks. Farage told the crowd that Johnson was a hypocrite for criticizing him for saying similar things.