NOVEMBER 21, 2025
Donald Trump and Nigel Farage at a Make America Great Again rally in 2020. The Reform leader has criticized the US president’s Ukraine peace plan – Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty
Nigel Farage has backed Ukraine’s opposition to Donald Trump’s peace deal and criticized the US president’s demand that the country halves the size of its army.
In a rare public rebuke of Mr. Trump, the Reform UK leader told The Telegraph that the terms on offer to Kyiv were not “acceptable”.
Mr. Farage’s remarks represent a significant strengthening of his support for Ukraine following attempts by Labour to cast him as sympathetic to Vladimir Putin.
They come after the Trump administration tabled a 28-point peace plan designed to end the fighting between Ukraine and Russia.
The plan – which would force Kyiv to hand over land to Moscow that it has not taken – has been denounced by critics as a “capitulation” to the Kremlin.
Under the terms of the proposed agreement, Ukraine would have to reduce the size of its army from one million active personnel to 600,000. The country would also be locked out of Nato, and would not be allowed to host either troops or warplanes operated by Western allies.
Mr. Trump has given Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, until Thursday to accept the deal or face being cut off from US arms supplies and intelligence.
In March, Mr. Farage opposed an earlier US peace plan, telling Radio 4’s Today programme: “It’s quite right to aim for peace, but we can’t have a peace that turns Putin into a winner, so I would not be 100 per cent with where his team is right now, absolutely not.”
In response to this week’s plan, he told The Telegraph: “I don’t think Ukraine being asked to halve the size of their army is acceptable. I am waiting to see a counter-proposal from Zelensky’s government.”
Earlier this year, Mr. Farage publicly rejected Mr. Trump’s claim that Mr. Zelensky was a dictator, insisting that was not the case.
Reform’s leader has repeatedly burnished his links to the White House, but has increasingly distanced himself from its stance on Russia’s invasion.
Polling shows that public support for Ukraine remains strong, with six in 10 voters backing continued UK assistance to the country.
Six in 10 voters back continued UK assistance to Ukraine – Reuters
Mr. Farage’s intervention came on the same day that Nathan Gill, Reform’s former leader in Wales, was jailed for 10 and a half years for accepting bribes to promote Russian interests in the European Parliament.
Sir Keir Starmer responded to the sentencing by urging Mr. Farage to set up an internal inquiry into “what other links are there between his party and Russia”.
Labour has attempted to portray Reform as pro-Russian, with Sir Keir claiming earlier this year that its leader was “fawning over Putin”. No 10 strategists have identified questions over the poll-topping party’s strength of support for Ukraine as an area in which they could sow doubt in voters’ minds.
Mr. Farage has said Nato “provoked” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by expanding eastwards, though he has insisted the blame for the war lies with Putin.
Last month, the Reform leader insisted that he would be prepared to “shoot down” Russian jets if they crossed into allied airspace should he become prime minister. The remarks, in an interview with Bloomberg, were seen as an attempt to dispel any questions over his commitment to the Western military alliance.
Courtesy/Source: The Telegraph
