Putin Praised Former Reform UK Politician’s MEP Recruitment Operation

Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin praised Nathan Gill for recruit­ing British MEPs in a Russ­ian influ­ence oper­a­tion. On 23 Novem­ber 2025, The Sun­day Times report­ed that What­sApp exchanges between Gill and alleged Russ­ian agent Oleg Voloshyn showed Vik­tor Medved­chuk told Gill that Putin was impressed by MEP com­ments. The arti­cle begins:

Pres­i­dent Putin is said to have been per­son­al­ly “impressed” by the abil­i­ty of Nathan Gill, the dis­graced for­mer Reform UK politi­cian, to per­suade a string of British MEPs to appear on a pro-Krem­lin tele­vi­sion chan­nel. This praise was allud­ed to in What­sApp exchanges between Gill and Oleg Voloshyn, an alleged Russ­ian agent, who paid the for­mer leader of Reform in Wales up to £40,000 in bribes. Gill was jailed for more than ten years on Fri­day after admit­ting that he accept­ed the mon­ey to pro­mote the Krem­lin’s agen­da in the Euro­pean parliament.

Read more: https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/putin-praised-nathan-gills-recruitment-of-meps-for-interviews-wlvw5w90r

Reform UK is a right-wing pop­ulist polit­i­cal par­ty in the Unit­ed King­dom, found­ed in late 2018 as the Brex­it Par­ty by Nigel Farage and Cather­ine Blaik­lock to push for a hard­er exit from the Euro­pean Union.

For more, go here: https://www.global-influence-ops.com/wiki/reform-uk/

Key Points

• Voloshyn mes­saged Gill on March 28, 2019, report­ing that Medved­chuk called the MEP inter­views awe­some and boast­ed about the com­ments to a high-lev­el friend who was impressed, with inves­ti­ga­tors believ­ing the cryp­tic ref­er­ence was to Putin, god­fa­ther of Medved­chuk’s youngest child.
• Pros­e­cu­tors alleged Gill recruit­ed at least sev­en pro-Brex­it MEPs, includ­ing Jonathan Bul­lock, Julia Reid, and Steven Woolfe, to appear on the pro-Krem­lin 112 Ukraine chan­nel, with Voloshyn offer­ing to secure at least 5k for recruit­ing three or four MEPs.
• Gill was stopped by coun­tert­er­ror­ism offi­cers at Man­ches­ter Air­port in Sep­tem­ber 2021, claim­ing to fly to Moscow for a sci­en­tif­ic con­fer­ence, with phone mes­sages show­ing pay­ments from Voloshyn dis­guised as Xmas gifts, post­cards, and a small sack of paper gifts.
• Voloshyn approached Gill in the run-up to Rus­si­a’s full-scale inva­sion of Ukraine, act­ing at the behest of Vik­tor Medved­chuk, a wealthy Ukrain­ian oppo­si­tion politi­cian and key Putin ally who was lat­er accused of trea­son by Ukraine in May 2021 and released in a pris­on­er swap.

Russia and the Global National Conservative Alliance: Putin’s Ideological Strategy

The Glob­al Nation­al Con­ser­v­a­tive Alliance rep­re­sents an ide­o­log­i­cal coali­tion unit­ing right-wing move­ments world­wide under prin­ci­ples of nation­al sov­er­eign­ty, cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty, and oppo­si­tion to glob­al insti­tu­tions. Rus­sia ini­tial­ly sought to become this move­men­t’s ide­o­log­i­cal cen­ter. How­ev­er, the Ukraine war dimin­ished its lead­er­ship role, allow­ing Hun­gary to emerge as the alliance’s pri­ma­ry bridge between Euro­pean and Amer­i­can conservatives.

Pres­i­dent Putin has repeat­ed­ly posi­tioned Rus­sia as the defend­er of “tra­di­tion­al val­ues” against what he char­ac­ter­izes as West­ern lib­er­al deca­dence. In his 2022 Val­dai Club speech, Putin assert­ed the exis­tence of a West­ern “neo-lib­er­al, cos­mopoli­tan elite” that stands in con­trast to tra­di­tion­al val­ues while invok­ing con­cepts like “Eura­sia” and fram­ing vol­un­tary child­less­ness as threat­en­ing state pol­i­cy. A Euro­pean Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions analy­sis found that Putin’s brand of con­ser­vatism aligns with the right-Chris­t­ian agen­da from US cul­ture wars, cre­at­ing what schol­ars call a “moral­ist inter­na­tion­al” span­ning continents.

Hun­gary serves as the focal point for this alliance under Vik­tor Orbán, who has increas­ing­ly mir­rored Moscow’s rhetoric on Ukraine while obstruct­ing EU sanc­tions. Budapest’s tra­jec­to­ry demon­strates ide­o­log­i­cal con­ver­gence with Moscow through con­tro­ver­sial child pro­tec­tion laws echo­ing Russ­ian social con­ser­vatism and deep­ened ener­gy depen­dence rein­forc­ing Russ­ian eco­nom­ic lever­age. For­eign Pol­i­cy described Hun­gary as “the exten­sion of Russ­ian for­eign pol­i­cy” with­in the EU and NATO, with Orbán act­ing as “Putin’s most use­ful idiot.”

The alliance man­i­fest­ed promi­nent­ly through Con­ser­v­a­tive Polit­i­cal Action Con­fer­ence events held in Budapest, where Orbán joined Euro­pean far-right lead­ers and Amer­i­can con­ser­v­a­tives in reject­ing glob­al­ism, mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, and lib­er­al democ­ra­cy. The Insti­tute of Mod­ern Rus­sia doc­u­ment­ed how Putin cre­at­ed chan­nels of com­mu­ni­ca­tion with Europe’s far-right through shared oppo­si­tion to LGBT rights and embrace of “tra­di­tion­al Chris­t­ian val­ues,” with far-right par­ties view­ing Putin as defend­ing nation­al sov­er­eign­ty against West­ern lib­er­al plu­ral­i­ty. These transna­tion­al con­nec­tions rep­re­sent what researchers iden­ti­fy as a mar­riage of con­ve­nience, ampli­fy­ing author­i­tar­i­an nar­ra­tives across demo­c­ra­t­ic societies.

Exter­nal References:

 • Con­ser­vatism by decree: Putin as a fig­ure­head for the glob­al far-right
• Why Does Vik­tor Orban Love the Krem­lin So Much?
• Putin­ism and the Euro­pean Far Right

Dis­claimer: The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) uti­lizes AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing the gen­er­a­tion of sum­maries for news items, intro­duc­tions, key points, and, often, the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, all images are gen­er­at­ed using AI and are intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.