One of Nigel Farage’s most prominent supporters has repeatedly called for closer ties with the Kremlin, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
Jonathan Mappin – who this weekend organized a reformist rally where candidates “applauded” Farage’s controversial comments about the West being to blame for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – has said that “being friends with Putin is very smart”. We love it’.
Mappin, 59, heir to the Mappin and Webb jewelry family and a practicing Scientologist, previously hired Farage on the advisory board of his company, Dutch Green Business.
He owns the three-star Camelot Castle hotel in Tintagel, Cornwall, which hosted Friday’s Reform rally, and told this newspaper that the room full of candidates “were all applauding” when they heard Farage’s controversial comments.
After Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Mappin said it was a “gift to the freedom of the world” and that he supported the “Russian bear.”
And last June, Mappin and his wife Irina attended a private event hosted by Andrey Kelin, Russia’s ambassador to London, at his Kensington residence, saying afterwards that “we were received very warmly.”
One of Nigel Farage’s most prominent supporters has repeatedly called for closer ties with the Kremlin.
Jonathan Mappin, 59, who organized a reform demonstration this weekend, said that “being friends with Putin is very smart.” We love it’.
Last night Mappin told the State Department: “I have said what I have said on the issue to help this country.” Neither Reform nor Farage pay me, I’m just a friend and an independent thinker.
Outrage over Nigel Farage’s claim that the West was to blame for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine deepened last night when President Zelensky accused him of being infected by the “Putinism virus”.
The extraordinary intervention adds strength to the growing backlash against the reformist leader’s claim that EU and NATO expansion had given Vladimir Putin a reason to justify war.
He also called Volodymyr Zelensky a “murderer” and said the Ukrainian leader forced “all NATO citizens… to finance his Nazi operations.”
This newspaper has also compiled a damning dossier of 22 reformist candidates who have expressed sympathies for Putin and his invasion, or endorsed false claims aligned with Moscow’s propaganda machine.
After being condemned by Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer, Farage compared the row over his comments, made during an interview with the BBC, to the “Russia hoax”, the term used by former US president Donald Trump to dismiss accusations of who had conspired with Moscow. . In a speech to his supporters in Clacton, Essex, where he is based, Farage said: “We are back in the Russian hoax, just as we have been in the US year after year.”
Although there has been no official reaction from kyiv, a source in President Zelensky’s office told the BBC: “The virus of Putinism, unfortunately, infects people.”
Farage’s controversial comments were condemned by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. Pictured: Sunak shakes hands with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during a visit to the Presidential Palace in kyiv, Ukraine, to announce a major new £2.5bn package of military aid to the country over the next year, 12 January 2024.
In other electoral events:
- Former Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick today uses a Mail on Sunday article to effectively launch a bid to succeed Rishi Sunak, calling on the Conservatives to confront the threat of reform by tackling “unsustainable” immigration and bringing back Boris Johnson but said Farage should have no place in the party;
- Farage told the State Office he would be willing to join forces with Jenrick and former home secretary Priti Patel, but not with Boris unless he apologized for mass immigration and net zero;
- Starmer’s chief of staff, Sue Gray, is said to be planning to maintain control of the “supermajority” of Labor MPs by closing the bars of the House of Commons;
- Fears have emerged that Labour’s “hidden tax rises” could spark a 1970s-style “brain drain” amid claims that wealthy executives are already leaving the UK.
In his BBC interview with Nick Robinson, Farage also spoke of his “admiration” for Putin as a “political operative” but insisted he did not like the Russian leader as a person.
The Reform leader sent a video message to the Cornwall event apologizing for his absence.
The MoS’s dossier of reform candidates who have expressed sympathy for Putin includes North Durham’s Andrew Husband, who has branded President Zelensky “evil and corrupt” and a “dictator”. He has also falsely claimed that Ukraine is “the child trafficking capital of Europe” and that the country had committed an eight-year “genocide” against Russian speakers. In another post, he shared false claims that Alexei Navalny, the late Russian opposition leader and Putin’s fiercest critic, died due to a blood clot caused by the Covid vaccine.
Angela Carter-Begbie, who is in Queen’s Park and Maida Vale, has said that “Putin wants peace, but the West doesn’t want it”, that “Ukraine was horrible to the Russians first” and that “Putin put his people in first place”. .
John Clark, in Bangor Aberconwy, described Putin as “sane and reasonable”. He also said that supporting Ukraine was “not in Britain’s interests” and responded to Lord Cameron’s support for Ukraine by saying: “They are stripping our country of assets to pay their globalist friends to expand their empire.”
Hamish Haddow, in Chipping Barnet, falsely claimed Boris Johnson ‘stopped Ukraine peace talks at the request of (Joe) Biden’ and said ‘every Ukrainian death (is) firmly on Boris’.
Teresa DeSantis, in Chichester, said Boris was “acting like Zelensky’s rent boy, preaching war”, while Jack Aaron in Welwyn Hatfield called Putin’s use of force in Ukraine “legitimate” and compared to Churchill. Malcolm Cupis, in Melksham and Devizes, compared calls for Ukrainian refugees in the UK to be exempt from car registration fees to “ethnic cleansing”. Peter Morris, in Melton and Syston, claimed that the war was about “the US defense budget”, while Jack Brookes, in Birmingham Erdington, claimed that Boris “kept the war going”.
In a statement clarifying his position, Farage said: “Putin was wrong to invade a sovereign nation and the EU was wrong to expand eastwards.”
And in today’s Sunday Telegraph he said he would not apologize for “telling the truth” and that he was the victim of an “insult” by the “political establishment”.
He wrote: “I am not and have never been a Putin apologist or supporter. Their invasion of Ukraine was immoral, scandalous and indefensible. I have never tried to justify Putin’s invasion in any way. But that doesn’t change the fact that I saw it coming a decade ago. What I have been saying for the last ten years is that the West has played into Putin’s hands, giving him the excuse to do what he wanted to do anyway.’
Home Secretary James Cleverly said Farage’s comments “echoed Putin’s vile justification”, while Sunak said: “What he said was completely wrong and only plays into Putin’s hands.”
Former Defense Secretary Ben Wallace compared Farage to the “pub bore… who often says ‘if I were running the country’ and presents very simplistic answers to… complex problems”.