Nigel Farage, Ukraine and the West

There are a whole number of reasons why one will not see eye to eye with Nigel Farage. The British politician, at this point leader of Reform UK, has been a controversial figure for the past many years. The doggedness with which he carried out the campaign for Britain to leave the European Union yet rankles with people who clearly feel Brexit was wrong. His harsh comments on immigration have not made people happy. And as a friend of Donald Trump, he has clearly made it known where he stands when it is American politics under discussion.

Of late, though, Farage has taken centre stage again, in these few days that remain before Britons go to the polls to elect their next government on 4 July. All major party leaders --- Rishi Sunak, Keir Starmer and Ed Davey --- have rounded on Farage over his statement that it was provocation by the West which led to Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine. He has been depicted as playing into the Russian leader's hands, has been accused of appeasing Moscow, has been criticised for speaking in the language of the Russian leader.

But consider his view that whatever has been happening in and about Ukraine has to do with how the West --- the US, Nato and the EU --- has been doing all those things that compelled Putin to go after Ukraine. Farage certainly shares the opinion of many around the world that it was the deliberate mission of the West in taking Nato increasingly eastward, to Russia's borders, that caused the crisis an end to which is not in sight. President Putin had repeatedly warned the West to do nothing that would bring Nato to his country's doorstep.

The West did not listen. The consequences are out there for everyone to see. Farage pointed out this glaring reality in his interview with the BBC. His words have left many angry, others disappointed, some others perplexed. The western mindset about Russia being one of hostility to Putin and sympathy for Ukraine, it is not surprising that Farage's comments have raised a storm. The question now is simple: despite all those howls of protest, was Farage too far wrong? That western politicians have only muddled things through their defence of Ukraine, without acknowledging their fault in trying to have Nato position itself on the Russian border, is the reason why the world is in a mess today.

Nato and the EU, rather than calling a halt to their mission of creating a ring of unfriendly nations around Russia --- think of Sweden, Finland and other countries which in recent times have been welcomed into the structure of Europe as devised by the West --- have persisted in arming Volodymyr Zelensky with sophisticated weaponry in the expectation that Ukraine will have Russia bite the dust on the battlefield. That ambition has not been fulfilled. It is not likely that Moscow will cave in before Kyiv. The determination of the West to prop up Zelensky against Putin has resulted in a stalemate. It is clear, though, that in the face of Moscow's military might Kyiv, for all the support it has had and will have from western capitals, will not win the war.

Nato has palpably been playing a role which is not conducive to peace and stability in Europe. Indeed, Nato is a throwback to an era which vanished into history years ago. It came into being in 1949 as a guarantor of the defence of western democracy and set itself up as a rival in the mid-1950s to the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact. The Cold War which underpinned European politics vis-à-vis Soviet communism ended years ago with the collapse of Mikhail Gorbachev's policies. All states once part of the old Soviet orbit are today democracies, with elected governments determining their future. Once eastern Europe turned its back on communism and marched into the democratic camp, the Warsaw Pact ceased to be and Nato became an anachronism.

But Nato has stayed on, provoking conditions of the sort Nigel Farage referred to the other day. It should have been abolished years ago, with Europe's diverse nation-states given a free hand to pursue their distinctive national goals. That did not happen. Nato and with it the EU have pretended all these years that the Cold War is yet around, that Russia is still the enemy. What the world now has, therefore, is a quagmire where the Ukraine situation is pushing Europe to a predictably worsening condition. One is not quite aware when or how the Ukraine crisis will draw to an end, for it is not clear for how long Nato and the EU will continue to engage in the bellicosity they have engaged in with Moscow.

Western ambitions of expanding Nato in the east of Europe have been counter-productive. The world is today home to two clear spheres of influence. China, Russia and North Korea are a new worry for the West, but don't blame Putin, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un for it. The West has increasingly tied itself in knots over Ukraine. Its blatant support of Zelensky and its demonization of Putin --- note the warrant of arrest served by the International Criminal Court on the Russian leader --- have left no scope for diplomacy to play a role in a resolution of the crisis. Add in the fact that Iran has been getting closer to Moscow and Beijing in these past couple of years. These are realities which have placed the West in a bind, though no western leader will acknowledge this grim situation.

Western support for Zelensky will not humble Russia. It will only force the Ukraine leader into a situation where his forces will battle Russian troops with no prospect of victory. Moscow will have weaponry coming in from Beijing and Pyongyang, a prospect which plainly worries the powerful men and women in Washington, London and Brussels. It is a crisis that will not end, unless the West reassesses its strategy of trying to browbeat Putin into submission, until there is rethinking in western capitals on Nato incursion into regions close to the Russian border.

President Putin will not sue for peace, for his situation is not dire. The recent history of Russia is a tale of national unity forged through suffering at the hands of foreign invaders --- Napoleon and Hitler --- and Moscow's eventually putting its enemies to flight. An end to the Ukraine conflict will therefore be brought about by the unlikely prospect of Russian forces seizing larger swathes of Ukrainian territory. Wiser for the West will be to reach out to Moscow through diplomacy, preferably through the services of UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres.

Britain's politicians and their counterparts in Europe would do well to ponder Nigel Farage's views. On Ukraine, he speaks sense.

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