Nathan Gill, the former leader of Reform in Wales, has pleaded guilty to eight counts of accepting bribes from Russian sources in exchange for making pro-Russian statements in the press and in the European Parliament.
It’s not the first time that Reform UK — and its predecessor parties — have been linked to Moscow’s orbit. The pattern goes back years, and the money trails are getting harder to ignore.
Farage and the Kremlin’s Media Machine
Nigel Farage was a regular fixture on Russia Today (RT), Putin’s propaganda outlet masquerading as a news network. His media income skyrocketed during that period: his company Thorn in the Side reported £9,737 in 2012, but by 2018 its income had ballooned to £548,573 — the same period he was making near-weekly appearances on RT.
Today, Farage is handsomely paid by GB News, where he’s also a shareholder. GB News itself loses around £1 million a week, its deficit covered by Legatum, a Gulf-based investment fund whose CEO has been accused under Parliamentary privilege of acting as a Russian asset.
Add to that the still-unresolved questions around Arron Banks, Andy Wigmore, and their meetings with the Russian Embassy, and the suspicion that Russian money may have flowed into the Leave.EU campaign they ran, and the picture starts to look a lot darker.
A Pattern of Influence
The Commons Intelligence and Security Committee concluded that there was “widespread Russian interference” in the Brexit referendum — interference that overwhelmingly benefitted the Leave campaign.
Meanwhile, Reform UK’s deputy leader, Richard Tice, was found to have broken Parliamentary rules by failing to register luxury hospitality received from Lubov Chernukhin, wife of a former Russian deputy finance minister and one of the most prolific donors to the Conservative Party.
So why all this interest from Russia?
Moscow’s Favourite Disruptors
Russia’s interference strategy has long been about destabilising democracies, not necessarily promoting one ideology over another. It has funded or supported populist movements on both left and right, using disinformation, troll farms, and covert funding to undermine trust in institutions and fracture national politics.
But in recent years, the Kremlin’s focus has shifted decisively to Europe’s radical right. Moscow has openly backed Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in France and Matteo Salvini’s Lega in Italy — providing loans, publicity, and legitimacy.
Why? Because these parties weaken European unity, disrupt NATO cohesion, and spread anti-liberal narratives that suit Putin’s worldview. Increasingly, the influence has become mutual: Putin’s speeches now echo right-wing talking points from the West, railing against “wokeism,” “globalism,” and “liberal decay.”
The Real Scandal
What’s remarkable isn’t just the depth of these links — it’s the lack of scrutiny.
If similar connections existed between Labour figures and a hostile foreign power, the British press would be in full meltdown. Yet Reform and its allies receive a free pass from newspapers whose owners share their interests — tax cuts for the wealthy, deregulation, hostility to migration, and the destruction of the BBC.
The uncomfortable truth is that Russian interference has been normalised among sections of Britain’s political and business elite. British oligarchs now have more in common with Russian oligarchs than with the rest of us.
This isn’t a conspiracy theory — it’s a shared class interest. A politics of money, power, and influence, played out behind the populist mask of Reform UK.