Published by The i Paper (30th September, 2025)
Nathan Gill posed as a patriot who professed to love his country, boasting on his social media biography how he was a man “not ashamed” to display such pride alongside his love of God. A top ally of Nigel Farage, he won election to represent Wales in the European Parliament for six years, then followed his chum into the Brexit Party before running Reform UK’s campaign in 2021 for the Welsh Senedd. “We believe in protecting and defending freedom of speech, belief, expression and conscience,” he declared in a signed introduction to their manifesto asking for the trust of voters. “All people should be free to live their life however they choose.”
Yet Gill was, in reality, a traitor who betrayed his country, democracy and the cause of freedom by working secretly for Russia’s dictatorship. I first came across him 11 years ago after complaining how Ukip had voted against Ukraine’s association deal with the European Union. This was the core issue sparking the war in Ukraine when the Kremlin – stung by ousting of its patsy president after mass protests by people seeking freedom – attacked Crimea and the Donbas region. Farage, however, told the European parliament that Vladimir Putin “is actually on our side” in the fight against Islamic extremism. Then Gill tweeted me to say Ukraine should be a buffer zone between Nato and Russia. So much for Ukraine’s people being free to live their lives however they choose.
Yet now it has emerged that Gill was not just a naive fool parroting Putin’s propaganda but something far more sinister: a corrupt stooge of the Kremlin who took cash to deliver pro-Russian statements in Europe’s parliament and on television. Last week this greedy charlatan pleaded guilty in court on eight bribery counts, admitting he took money from a Ukrainian man who was identified by Washington as a “pawn” of Russian intelligence and sanctioned by Britain for spreading disinformation.
I hope Gill receives a long jail sentence for the betrayal of his nation, when he is sentenced in November. This is the latest criminal case in Britain exposing the nefarious extent of pro-Russian influence and espionage – including a spy ring which has targeted journalists and Kremlin critics for three years and the gang who set fire to a Ukrainian-owned London warehouse. Yet this unmasking of a close former ally is very embarrassing for Farage at a time when he is well ahead in the polls and setting the political agenda with his hardening line against immigration, as he shifts even further right.
Farage has, of course, infamously commended Putin – “as an operator, but not as human being” – when asked to name the world leader he most admired. He has admitted pocketing two appearance fees – “well under £5,000 each” – from the ogre’s puppet broadcaster Russia Today. He has pushed Kremlin propaganda – such as saying the West provoked Russia’s invasion, and blaming the EU for having “blood on its hands over Ukraine” – with frightening frequency for a man wanting to lead Britain.
One of the biggest Reform donors owns substantial land holdings in Russia. Another is the mother of his close aide George Cottrell – a convicted fraudster who spent eight months in an American jail facing money laundering accusations and who spends much of his time in Montenegro, a Balkan country that has received a flood of Russian cash.
There is no evidence that Farage is corrupt or swayed by Kremlin money. But it is hard to dispute that his pet cause of Brexit helped further Putin’s desire to drive open corrosive divisions in democracies. Nor that this is a centrepiece of Kremlin strategy in Moscow’s war on the West, which includes funding disinformation factories to weaponise social media, fuelling migration into EU countries such as Poland and covert funding of extremists and populists. One US State Department report based on intelligence said Russia gave $300m to parties, officials and politicians in at least two dozen countries in the eight years after 2014. Clearly, across Europe, Gill was far from alone in pocketing blood money while spouting nationalist nonsense and flag-waving.
In 2014, the year of Russia’s initial attack on Ukraine, banks linked to the Kremlin loaned £9.4m to Marine Le Pen’s French far-right party. She then spoke out repeatedly in support of Putin’s annexation of Crimea, said she admired the dictator and laughed off suggestions that he was a threat to Europe. France’s far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon echoed many of Le Pen’s claims, showing again how the two extremes so often end up in the same foetid swamp. Leaked Russian documents revealed that Moscow sought to unite right- and left-wing populists in Germany into a unified movement opposing support for Ukraine.
Last year, the US Justice Department alleged that Russia Today officials funnelled almost $10m (£7.5m) through shell companies to a Tennessee-based firm to create and amplify content that boosted Kremlin narratives. That firm was Tenet Media, which provides a platform for high-profile, hard-right cheerleaders for President Donald Trump. Lauren Southern, a prominent Canadian political activist once banned from Britain for distributing racist material, admitted being paid about $100,000 to make videos comparing Canada to the Soviet Union and campaigning against online regulation, although denying she knew the source of the money. Meanwhile, Trump is viciously targeting the former FBI chief James Comey, who led the investigation into Russian election interference and any links between Russia and his campaign.
For more than a decade, I have argued that we need to wake up to the threat from Russia, which is deploying all means at its disposal to shred our way of life with assistance from its autocratic allies. Gill is a selfish charlatan, guilty of hideous deception and hypocrisy. Yet he demonstrates again how Kremlin tentacles reach deep into the underbellies of our democracies, using cash, populists and electoral despair to promote its destructive creed. Like it or not, we are in a fight for the freedom that this fraud of a politician claimed to espouse.