Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine a year ago was an “abhorrent” but “entirely predictable” result of European Union and NATO expansionism, according to Nigel Farage.
The Brexit champion marked the one-year anniversary of the February 24th invasion of Ukraine in 2022 by recalling his warnings against the West entanglings itself in Eastern European geopolitics following the Euromaidan in Kyiv (Kiev) in 2014.
Farage, who was a serving Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the UK Independence Party (UKIP) when Russia annexed Crimea and unofficially intervened in the Donbas (Donbass) on the side of pro-Russia separatists in response to the Western-backed Euromaidan coup against then-Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, reiterated that the 2022 invasion was “totally abhorrent” but hardly unforeseeable.
“I warned in 2014 that EU and NATO expansion would lead to war,” he said, supporting his assertion with a clip of him voicing his concerns in the European Parliament at the time.
“[W]e are rushing through an Association Agreement at undue speed with the Ukraine, and as we speak there are NATO soldiers engaged in military exercises in the Ukraine,” he can be heard saying in the clip.
“Have we taken leave of our senses? Do we actually want to have a war with Putin?” he demands.
“Because if we do, we are certainly going about it the right way,” he adds.
While many believe Russia’s “special military operation”, as it terms its war on Ukraine, has naked imperialism as its object, President Putin’s official justification alleges that, among other things, it could not risk allowing its increasingly NATO-tied neighbour to continue building its military capacity and integrating with the Western alliance.
The EU Association Agreement referred to by Farage, meanwhile, had initially been rejected by Yanukovych, whose electoral power base was in the Donbas, after Russia made what his government saw as a better offer, and the fact that it was revived after he was driven from the Ukrainian capital by an armed mob was seen by some as an example of the EU going beyond the bounds of normal politics to get its way.
European Union interests during the Maidan may not have entirely aligned with those of the Barack Obama administration in the United States, however, as indicated by then-Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland — now Joe Biden’s Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs — making her infamous “f**k the EU” remarks in a leaked phone call at the time.
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