Nathan Gill ‘part of bigger pro-Russian network than has yet been exposed’

Martin Shipton

A British journalist who has described Putin’s Russia as a “Mafia state” has written a book in which he suggests that Nathan Gill, Reform UK’s jailed former leader in Wales, was part of a bigger pro-Russian network than has previously been reported.

Gill is serving a 10 and a half year sentence after being paid £40,000 by a Russian agent to ask pro-Russia questions in the European Parliament.

In his book Betrayal, due to be published on August 27, Luke Harding of the Guardian writes about meeting the pro-Russian Ukrainian diplomat who years later bribed Gill.

Introducing an extract of his new book published in the investigative news website The Nerve, Harding writes: “In 2008, I met the Ukrainian diplomat and journalist who would go on to bribe Gill: Oleh Voloshyn. At the time he was working as press attaché at the Ukrainian embassy in Moscow, where I was based as the bureau chief for the Guardian. Voloshyn made no secret of his pro-Kremlin views. He was clever, chatty and spoke impeccable English. He later went back to Kyiv to work for the Putin-backed administration of Ukraine’s president, Viktor Yanukovych.

“In the years that followed – wittingly or not, paid or not – Farage and his political colleagues repeated Russian government talking points. Famously, Farage has said he admires Putin as an operator; as recently as last week one of his supporters expressed sympathy with Moscow as it continues to pound Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities with drones and ballistic missiles.”

Nation.Cymru reported how a social media account branded as Reform UK Alyn & Deeside and Wrexham advocated defunding Ukraine, a scenario that would inevitably lead to Russia’s victory in the war between the two countries.

Harding writes how Farage has sought to distance himself from Gill: “He has dismissed Gill as a bad apple. And yet it seems certain that more scandal will engulf the Kremlin-friendly right of British politics, whose allegiances remain murky. There are further betrayals to come.”

Pro-Russia speech

In the book Harding describes how Gill made a pro-Russia speech in the European Parliament in December 2018: “At 8.21pm, it was the turn of one of Farage’s party colleagues to speak. His name was Nathan Gill. Gill was the leader of Ukip in Wales. He stood up and made a two-minute speech, reading from a piece of paper. First, he declared his support for Ukraine’s sovereignty. Then he moved on to his actual theme: that freedom of the press in Ukraine was under threat. Kyiv, he said, had recently clamped down on two Ukrainian media outlets, 112 Ukraine and News One.

“This was bad and un-European, he argued, adding: ‘I have every sympathy with Ukraine when it comes to Russian aggression and interference. But as surely as you can’t fight fire with fire, it is wrong to fight repression with repression. We’ve seen activists and journalists alike being violently attacked by radicals, with little if any reaction or protection from the Ukrainian government.’ Ukraine’s president, Petro Poroshenko, should support the ‘sacrosanct’ principles of freedom and democracy. ‘That means allowing TV stations to broadcast whether you like the message or not,’ he told the assembly.

“Voloshyn cultivated Gill using KGB methods. There was flattery and expressions of friendship, similar to the techniques used on Trump in the 1980s by the Soviet ambassador.

“For six years, Gill had served as a Mormon bishop. Despite giving quite a few sermons, he was no orator: the politician’s manner was uninspiring and wooden. Evidently, he lacked Farage’s dubious man-of-the-people charm and ability to stir a crowd.

“Beyond that, the speech itself was rather weird. Some of its phrases seemed out of place. The MEP referred to ‘the Ukraine’, rather than simply ‘Ukraine’. It was an old-fashioned formulation dating from before Ukraine’s independence and taken from the Russian phrase Na Ukraine. It suggests Ukraine perches on the edge of a Russian imperium. Then there was the word ‘radicals’. This was a bogeyman Kremlin term. It equated support for the Ukrainian nation with dangerous extremism.

“Another oddity was the choice of topic. There was no obvious reason for Gill’s passionate interest in the domestic affairs of an eastern European country. Media pluralism in Ukraine was scarcely a burning issue for the farmers back in Wales, nor a subject of which Gill might claim expert knowledge. He lived in Anglesey, a small island off the coast of north Wales. He and his American wife, Jana, were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and had five children. Previously, he had run a family care home business that collapsed during the 2008 financial crisis, with £116,000 in debts. He then failed to win a seat as a local councillor, before in 2014 topping the list of Ukip European candidates and becoming an MEP.

‘Kippers’

“Farage’s tabloid-dubbed “Kippers” did not add much to the serious policy work of the parliament. The EU, after all, was an institution they wished to destroy. Their main task was to applaud and cheer whenever their leader spoke, as a sort of Brexit-supporting Greek chorus, so that video clips of Farage looked good on social media.

“Gill’s intervention made no impression on the Strasbourg chamber. Two of his Ukip MEP colleagues – David Coburn (the leader of Ukip in Scotland) and Jonathan Arnott – followed up with pithy speeches on the same theme, asking if Ukraine was really ready for EU membership. The trio’s contributions were forgettable, but they delighted one person who had travelled from Kyiv to Strasbourg for the occasion: a Ukrainian journalist and one-time diplomat called Oleh Voloshyn.

“Immediately afterwards, Gill pinged Voloshyn a recording of his speech, as well as Coburn’s, filmed side-on with a camera phone. Voloshyn was thrilled, telling Gill: ‘Impressive … You are the perfect orator.’ Gill messaged back, alluding to a mysterious person, V: ‘V should be pleased with this 3x what he thought.’ Voloshyn agreed. ‘Exactly!!! Thank you so much,’ he wrote.

‘Conspiracy’

Harding states: “The exchanges were part of a conspiracy. It involved Kremlin propaganda, Russian operatives and corruptible public servants. There were cash bribes, delivered in white envelopes over dinners in Strasbourg and Brussels. Gill accepted money on at least eight occasions. He was one head in a hydra-like influence network whose scale was unknown. There were connections to party representatives inside multiple EU states, among them Poland, Germany, France, Belgium, Italy, Slovakia and Bulgaria.

“There were numerous players on the Russian side. Volosyhn was, London alleged, an undercover Kremlin asset. He had close ties with Putin’s old spy agency, US officials added, labelling him an FSB ‘pawn’. (Voloshyn denies the allegations.)

“According to Czech intelligence, members of his immediate circle were close to the FSB’s Fifth Directorate, the organisation’s ‘foreign division’, responsible for Ukraine and other former Soviet states.

“Voloshyn’s wife, Nadia Borodi, who went under the pseudo­nym Sass, was also a TV journalist. Both of them worked at 112 Ukraine and News One, stations that were owned by an associate of Viktor Medvedchuk – the V of Gill’s messages. Medvedchuk was a long-time Kremlin agent and Ukraine’s leading pro-Russian figure; Putin is a friend of his and god­father to Medvedchuk’s younger daughter. In 2014 the Kremlin gifted Medvedchuk a Russian oil refinery, used to fund his media empire inside Ukraine.

“It was true that Medvedchuk’s TV channels were under sustained government pressure, as Gill claimed. But this was unsurprising: they functioned as Moscow mouthpieces, at a time when Ukraine was under existential attack. Medvedchuk provided funds for covert Russian activity; Voloshyn organised things. He would become a deputy in Ukraine’s parliament, the rada, for Medvedchuk’s political party, the Opposition Bloc, a role that made his European trips official.

“Voloshyn cultivated Gill using KGB methods. There was flattery and expressions of friendship, similar to the techniques used on Trump in the 1980s by the Soviet ambassador. Gill was invited to visit Kyiv and the Moldovan capital, Chişinău. On top of expenses-paid foreign tours, there were bungs in euros and dollars – an incentive for someone with Gill’s troubled financial history. Voloshyn typically handed over €5,000. In total Gill appears to have received £40,000. In his messages, Voloshyn hints at these transactions. He presents himself as a benevolent Santa, bringing ‘gift cards’, ‘small grants’ and ‘souvenirs’.

“The scheme was ingenious. Voloshyn surreptitiously paid Gill to parrot Russian narratives in the European Parliament; Gill then repeated the same scripted points to a TV crew from 112 Ukraine who had been sent to Strasbourg and Brussels. Voloshyn’s partner, Sass, conducted the interviews outside the media wall of the Louise Weiss building, and the channel then broadcast Gill’s ‘concerns’ to a Ukrainian and Russian audience. It was a neat little validation loop, helmed by a husband-­and-­wife team, which gave Russian disinformation a sheen of democratic legitimacy.”

Far right

Harding goes on to explain how Russia’s modern spy agencies still used leftwing actors, but under Putin the main vector of political influence shifted to the populist, anti-EU and anti-migrant far right.

He states: “Many of its supporters in Europe expressed sympathy towards Moscow and disliked Kyiv. As with Maga in the US, there was an ideological overlap between British Eurosceptics and the Russian government. Both wanted to undermine the EU, its institutions and its leadership. The Kremlin supported Brexit, seeing it as an instrument that would weaken Europe and divide British society.

“Wittingly or not, paid or unpaid, Ukip appeared happy to do Moscow’s bidding. Between 2010 and 2014 Farage appeared at least 17 times on RT. He made no criticism of Russian authoritarianism and claimed Europe was governed not by elected democracies, but ‘by the worst people we have seen in Europe since 1945’. Farage said he admired Putin, ‘not as a human being but an operator’, and repeated the claim that Nato’s ‘ever eastward expansion’ had provoked Putin’s war. He qualified this by adding: ‘Of course it’s his fault.’ Gill was another RT guest.

“It was in this context that eight British MEPs appeared on 112, spouting Voloshyn’s talking points. They were elected members of Ukip and its successor, the Brexit party. Among them were Coburn, Arnott and William Dartmouth, a British life peer and MEP for South West England. They were joined by German MEP Arne Gericke and French MEP Nicolas Bay, the latter a member of Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally. (It is not suggested that the above committed criminal acts or knew that Gill was taking bribes.)

“Farage says he knew nothing of Gill’s criminal activities or his ties with Moscow. Nevertheless, these were strange goings-on, with Russian emissaries warmly received at the doors of the Ukip delegation’s workplace. Gill would go on to lead Reform, Farage’s current political party, in Wales. The symbiosis between Reform and Russia raised a question: why would a pro-British, pro-independence organisation collaborate with the Russians?

“Gill served as Russia’s loyal proxy, wooing fellow MEPs over dinner to give anti-Ukraine commentary.

“Voloshyn’s arrangement with Gill ended in January 2020, when the UK departed from the EU and he stopped being an MEP. There was a last payment of $5,000 and €5,000 after Gill visited Ukraine as an “election observer”, one of a roster of foreign politicians brought into the country by Voloshyn to support the Opposition Bloc.

“The bribes would have stayed undetected were it not for the fact that Voloshyn made an uncharacteristic error. In July 2021 he went to America, landing at Dulles international airport in DC. The FBI pulled him from the arrivals queue. They interrogated him for three hours and confiscated his phone. The agency saw Voloshyn’s chats with Gill – many hundreds of messages – and passed them on to British counter-terrorism police.

“Gill was stopped two months later at Manchester Airport, where he was about to board a flight to Moscow. He was due to take part in a Kremlin forum on voting and cryptocurrency. Officers seized his phone. At his home in Anglesey they found around €5,000 and a similar amount in dollars, rolled up in rubber bands. The rest of the cash was never discovered. In police interviews Gill answered ‘no comment’ to questions.

‘Greed’

“He refused to explain, then and subsequently, why he took Moscow’s gold. Was it simple greed? Or did he believe in the cause?

“It was a dramatic fall, one of the most spectacular in recent European politics. The proof of his guilt was extensive, and yet several persons were missing: the shadowy ‘others’ from the indictment, some of them undoubtedly living abroad. How extensive was this spy ring? Were there other members of Gill’s hard-right outfit whose connections to Russia had not yet been fully exposed? And what about MEPs from other countries?

“The academic and writer Anton Shekhovtsov stumbled across Gill while researching a Polish pro-Russian activist, Janusz Niedźwiecki, who was arrested in 2021 on charges of spying for Moscow. Niedźwiecki and Voloshyn had arranged Gill’s Ukraine trips. ‘I presume Gill is not the only politician who took bribes, but he is the one who got caught. The affair is only the tip of the iceberg in a broader web of influence operations,’ Shekhovtsov said.”

Betrayal: Trump, Putin and The New Age of Conquest by Luke Harding is published by Guardian Faber Publishing at £20.

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