Nathan Gill, the former leader of Reform UK in Wales, has been sentenced to 10-and-a-half years in prison for taking bribes to deliver pro-Putin interviews and speeches.
He has received some £40,000 to shill for Putin in various media and also in the European Parliament whose member Gill was for several years.
In addition to Putin’s coffers, another source of Gill’s extra income was Viktor Medvedchuk, Ukrainian oligarch and Russian agent. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Gill received Putin’s ruble both directly and through Medvedchuk’s mediation.
The latter owned two TV channels that transmitted pro-Putin and anti-Ukrainian propaganda round the clock. After 2014, when Russia attacked the Ukraine by annexing the Crimea and part of East Ukraine, Medvedchuk was legitimately regarded as an enemy agent of influence.
It’s testimony to the Ukraine’s commitment to free speech and due process that Medvedchuk’s channels weren’t shut down immediately and he himself thrown into prison. As it was, the legal rigmarole lasted several years, and only in 2021 were the two mouthpieces of enemy propaganda taken off the air. Medvedchuk himself escaped to Russia, to join his daughter’s godfather, Putin.
In 2018, while the debates about those two seditious channels raged on, Gill, then an MEP made a speech in which he rebuked the Ukraine for violating that sacred freedom of speech. How can the West support a country, he asked rhetorically, that shuts down opposition media? (He wasn’t all talk either. Gill also acted as a talent spotter, getting his Russian handlers in touch with other like-minded MEPs.)
By that logic, William Joyce, ‘Lord Haw-Haw’, ought to have been allowed to broadcast his pro-Nazi propaganda from London, rather than having to flee to Berlin en route to the British gallows.
Gill and other Putinversteher realised that as well as you and me. They were preaching that drivel not just on its face value but to register support for Russian fascism. Gill was acting as a paid agent, but others… well, we’ll talk about the others a bit later.
Once Russia’s full-scale aggression began, Gill et al. began to act as conduits for the Kremlin line vindicating that crime.
Putin, they were saying, was provoked by NATO’s eastward expansion. So it was all NATO’s fault. Russia was an innocent victim, lashing back. And the Ukraine isn’t squeaky clean either. Look, corruption is rife there, and opposition TV channels are being shut down.
In the past 11 years I’ve heard such lines a thousand times if I’ve heard them once. Some, such as Rodney Atkinson, Mr Bean’s elder brother, acted as Putin’s propagandists out of sheer stupidity. Others… well, we’ll talk about the others a bit later.
In the end, Gill pleaded guilty to eight counts of bribery and got his marginally just deserts. As far as I am concerned, he ought to have been charged with treason and sentenced to life in prison (the death penalty for that crime was abolished in 1998).
Gill was an agent of influence subverting public opinion in favour of an evil foreign power openly hostile to Britain and regularly threatening to visit a nuclear holocaust on these Isles. But even if we don’t recognise that a state of war exists between NATO and Russia, what Gill did is still high treason.
We should take our cue from America, where Jonathan Pollard, the former U.S. Navy analyst, spent three decades in prison for spying for Israel. And the last time I looked, Israel is America’s staunch ally.
As it is, Gill will probably be out in a few years and receive his hero’s welcome in Putin’s Russia. Still, a short stint in prison is better than none.
Now I must fulfil my promise and tell you about those mysterious “others” sharing Gill’s views if not necessarily his pecuniary motivation. For ‘understanding Putin’ is a popular sport on the populist Right and neo-fascist Left (the other day I wrote an article showing where the two groups converge).
For example, when Nigel Farage, Reform leader, still led UKIP, he appeared on Russia Today, Putin’s propaganda TV channel, 17 times. I don’t know what the appearance fee was, or if there was one at all, but RT was a platform for foreign visitors to voice their admiration for Putin.
“I’ve appeared on RT occasionally,” said Mr Farage. “They are a broadcaster with an audience. They may well have a political agenda, but you can’t ignore them.” Now imagine a British politician saying the same thing about Der Stürmer in, say, 1938.
“Herr Streicher may well have a political agenda, but he is a publisher with a readership. We can’t ignore him.”
Gill’s line about that dastardly NATO isn’t alien to Farage either. He has been known to suggest that Putin’s aggression was provoked by “the endless eastward expansion of NATO and the European Union”.
Farage also expressed his unreserved admiration for Putin as a political operator, if not necessarily a human being. That qualifier can be safely ignored: that’s how Putinversteher couch their sycophancy to establish their bona fides.
And Farage’s good friend, Donald Trump, has certainly uttered more glowing praise for Putin than for all Western leaders combined (not that I think they deserve praise — but at least they aren’t threatening to incinerate Britain).
Anyone analysing the current war in the Ukraine in good faith would know exactly which side Trump is on. His latest attempt to sell capitulation as equitable peace and shove it down Zelensky’s throat is yet another proof of Trump’s sympathies.
I’ll say one thing for the Donald: he isn’t being paid by Putin every time he says the KGB man is a strong leader, a patriot and an overall good egg. George W. Bush wasn’t paid either when he said: “I looked into Putin’s eyes and I saw a soul. I trusted him.” He spoke from his stupid heart, but compliments to Dubya for his eyesight. He saw something that doesn’t exist.
Then there is our own dear Peter Hitchens. His boundless sycophancy to Putin and admiration for “the most conservative and Christian country in Europe” have been my frequent subject over the past decade at least.
I shan’t repeat what Hitchens has said about Russia, Putin and the aggression against the Ukraine. Just write down, as stab points, the Kremlin line on the current events, and produce a checklist. Then go down that list, and you’ll find that Hitchens, just like Gill, has been regurgitating each point, in some cases verbatim.
It’s true that – as far as I know – he hasn’t drawn Putin’s ruble. Instead, Hitchens is handsomely paid by The Mail, and I bet he has received more than £40,000 for mouthing enemy propaganda.
True, his pay comes from a reputable British source, not a hostile foreign power. But Hitchens’s motivation would only matter in a court of law. Outside that august institution, I fail to see any substantial difference between him and Gill.
In passing her sentence, Judge Mrs Cheema-Grubb said that the harm caused by Gill had been “profound” and “damaging” to people’s trust in their politicians. I wish someone could explain to me why the harm caused by Hitchens is any less “profound” and “damaging” just because he is paid by The Mail and – presumably – not the FSB.
Personally, I would have liked to see Hitchens and other Putinversteher next to Gill in the dock. But that’ll have to remain a cherished fantasy, I’m afraid. Although one never knows.