Nigel Farage’s latest rally was disrupted after political activists lowered a remote-controlled banner showing Vladimir Putin behind him while he spoke.
While talking at The Columbine Centre in Walton-on-the-Naze in Essex, the Reform UK leader was initially unaware that the Russian president was on the poster, with the words ‘I heart Nigel’ written below.
He can be heard asking “Who put that up there?” before joking: “Someone at The Columbine Centre needs to get the sack”. Two staff members attempted to get rid of the banner, while audience members cheered and chanted “Rip it down”.
On their social media page, the group Led By Donkeys, who have previously targeted Mr Farage, wrote: “We just dropped in on Farage’s election rally with a beaming picture of Putin. Nigel was not pleased.”
Mr Farage has previously come under scrutiny for his comments on Putin, who has been president or prime minister of Russia since 1999.
When previously asked about him, Mr Farage told the BBC’s Nick Robinson: “I said I disliked him as a person, but I admired him as a political operator because he’s managed to take control of running Russia.”
He recently became embroiled in a war of words with former prime minister Boris Johnson, after he said that the West provoked Russia’s to invade Ukraine.
Writing in the Telegraph last Saturday, he urged readers not to “blame” him for “telling the truth about Putin’s war”.
Mr Johnson shared the article on X, formerly Twitter, calling Mr Farage’s views “morally repugnant”.
Referring to the Telegraph article, he wrote: “This is nauseating historical drivel and more Kremlin propaganda.”
In Kent on Monday, Mr Farage said he had been “more far-sighted” in predicting a war in Ukraine, telling the crowd: “This has been turned into ‘Farage makes outrageous statement’, ‘Farage defends Putin’ – well, I’ve done none of those things.
“I would never, ever defend Putin and I think his behaviour in Ukraine and elsewhere has been reprehensible.
“But if we’re going to think towards a peace at some time in the not too distant future, perhaps it might be helpful to understand what went wrong in the first place.”
Turning his fire on the former prime minister, Mr Farage said: “Well, perhaps it’s Boris Johnson that’s morally repugnant and not me, I don’t know. But can you see the sheer level of hypocrisy? Can you see the nonsense of all of this?”
He added: “This man will go down as the worst prime minister of modern times. A man who betrayed an 80-seat majority. Who opened the door to mass immigration? Boris Johnson. Who betrayed the will of Brexit voters? It was Boris Johnson. He pretended to be a Conservative but he governed as a Green.”
Home Secretary James Cleverly accused Mr Farage of “echoing Putin’s vile justification for the brutal invasion of Ukraine” and shadow defence secretary John Healey said Mr Farage is “a Putin apologist who should never be trusted with our nation’s security”.