Leader of U.K. Independence Party Praises Putin

Last week Nigel Farage, the leader of the
United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), and Nick Clegg, British
deputy prime minister and leader of the Liberal Democrats, faced
each other in the first of two scheduled debates on the U.K.’s
membership in the European Union.

Polling suggests that most Britons who watched the debate
believed that Farage beat Clegg in the first debate, which was more
of an extended Q and A session with a studio audience than it was
an actual debate.

In the build-up for the second debate, scheduled to take place
this Wednesday, Farage is being criticized for comments he made
about the crisis in Ukraine during the first debate and for
praising Russian President Vladimir Putin as an “operator” after
being asked which world leader be admires the most in a
still-to-be-published interview with GQ magazine.

Farage said in response:

We should hang our heads in shame. The British government has
actually geed up the European Union to pursue effectively an
imperialist, expansionist – and even Mr Barroso the commission
president once himself said we are building an empire. We have
given a false series of hopes to a group of people in the western
Ukraine. So geed up were they that they actually toppled their own
elected leader. That provoked Mr Putin. I think the European Union
frankly does have blood on its hands in the Ukraine. And I don’t
want a European army, navy, air force or a European foreign policy.
It has not been a thing for good in the Ukraine.

Watch footage of Farage’s response below (starts at 57:35):

The BBC has the
following to say about Farage’s comments on Putin in an unpublished
GQ interview:

In an as yet unpublished interview for the magazine GQ, details
of which have been released, the UKIP leader was asked which world
leader he most admired.

He reportedly replied: “As an operator, but not as a human
being, I would say Putin. The way he played the whole Syria thing.
Brilliant. Not that I approve of him politically. How many
journalists in jail now?”

Without reading the whole interview, it sounds to me like Farage
is praising Putin’s brutal effectiveness and commitment, not his
moral judgments. That said, Farage’s recent comments on the
crisis in Ukraine and Putin do betray a strange understanding of
moral responsibility that is unlikely to help him attract more
support in future elections.