UK right-wing leader calls Putin "a very bad dude"

Nigel Farage, leader of the right-wing populist Reform UK party, has called Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin "a very bad dude" and said he supports the use of frozen Russian assets to aid Ukraine.

As  reported by The Telegraph, Farage, who has previously spoken of his admiration for Putin, has often faced criticism in the UK for his perceived leniency towards Russia, which has launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

"Clearly, Putin is not a rational man. The idea that I'm soft on this is just nonsense," Farage said.

Having described Putin as "a very bad dude", Farage added that he had once hoped that US President Donald Trump could influence the Russian leader.

"I was really hoping that Trump would bring Putin to heel, that some kind of compromise could be struck, as it's just been recently struck with Gaza and Israel. Clearly, that is not going to happen," he pointed out.

Asked on Thursday 16 October what he would do if Russian aircraft entered allied airspace, Farage replied: "Gotta shoot them down."

He also said that frozen Russian assets should be used to provide loans to Ukraine "if they're there through illegal means".

Farage also suggested that, if he were to become prime minister, he could support the deployment of UK troops to Ukraine as part of a UN peacekeeping mission in the event of a ceasefire.

However, Farage repeated his long-standing argument that "the endless eastward expansion of NATO and the European Union" had contributed to Putin's decision to invade Ukraine.

In February 2025, Farage defended Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy after Trump called him a "dictator".

Later, he said that the February meeting between Zelenskyy and Trump "would have gone better if the Ukrainian president had worn a suit to the White House".