Afternoon summary
Keir Starmer has arrived at the Munich Security Conference. He is giving his main speech tomorrow, but Jakub Krupa has further coverage of the events there today on his Europe live blog.
For a full list of all the stories covered on the blog today, do scroll through the list of key event headlines near the top of the blog.
Farage claims democracy in Ukraine 'destroyed' by Maidan revolution and those wanting closer links with Europe
In his Political Thinking podcast interview, Nick Robinson also asked Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, about his claim in 2014 that offering Ukraine membership of the EU would provoke Russia, triggering a war. Farage said that he had been right, and he said it was “odd to get so much abuse for being right”.
When Robinson put it to him that Farage should have been backing those Ukrainiains in 2014 who were in favour of closer links with Europe, because they were standing up for freedom and democracy, Farage did not accept the premise of his question.
He replied:
That’s the irony of the whole thing – that a democratically elected president of Ukraine was brought down by a street coup [in 2014]. Talk about democracy – actually, democracy was destroyed by those that wanted to drag Ukraine westward rather than eastward. In all of these things, picking goodies and badies is a very difficult game to play.
When Robinson asked if Farage was saying Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the current president, was not democractically elected, Farage said he was not talking about Zelensksyy. He said he was referring to Petro Poroshenko, the president elected after the Maiden revolution.
Poroshenko replace Viktor Yanukovych, who was seen as pro-Russian and corrupt and who triggered the Maidan revolution when he blocked a trade agreement with the EU that had been passed by the Ukrainian parliament.
In complaining about Yanukovych’s overthrow, Farage was very much siding with the Russian view of Ukraine. In Ukraine the Maidan protesters are still viewed as heroes.
Farage claimed that his interpretation of Ukrainian history was “based on knowledge and fact”, not emotion. When Robinson put it to him that he was happy to use emotive arguments himself, Farage claimed that he understood the situation better than most people.
He said:
[Those critics] wouldn’t understand, would they? They wouldn’t undertand that, unlike most other politicians, I’m actually quite well read.
I’ve got a broad sense of history and economics – far more, frankly and being honest, than most of our leaders of the other parties over the course of the last few years, and I am able to take a long-term view.
I think my understanding of Russian psychology was actually much deeper than any of the others’.
Farage said the “biggest disappointment” was that President Trump thought, when he got Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table, Putin would behave rationally. And that has not happened, Farage said.
