LONDON — Nigel Farage suggested Ukraine cannot defeat Russia — and questioned the U.S. decision to authorize Kyiv to use long-range missiles against Russian targets.
The intervention from the Reform UK leader and British ally of U.S. President Elect Donald Trump is a departure from other mainstream political parties in the U.K., who are willing on a Ukrainian victory.
And it comes after reports that U.K.-made Storm Shadow missiles have already been used to strike deep inside Russia.
“In Westminster … everybody still seems to think that we give Ukraine enough weaponry that somehow they’re going to win this war,” Farage said on his GB News show.
“Yet when I get outside of Westminster and talk to ordinary folk, I’ve not met anybody in my last month who thinks Ukraine is ever going to win.”
Farage added: “I worry because I think the idea Ukraine’s going to win, frankly, is for the birds.”
The Brexiteer suggested all the West was doing is ” helping to prolong a stalemate.”
Farage also warned that outgoing U.S. President Joe Biden’s strategy, and the U.K.’s own moves, do not align with Trump’s incoming administration.
“He is committed to negotiating a peace settlement. No one quite knows what that might look like, but that is what he’s committed to do,” Farage said. “Is the use of American and British long-range missiles going to help him in that process or make it more difficult?”
It’s not the first time the Reform UK leader has controversially weighed in on the war in Ukraine.
During the general election campaign he was condemned for saying the “ever eastward expansion of NATO and the European Union” provoked Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion.
