Nigel Farage has said the EU and Nato “provoked” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by expanding eastwards. Farage said he disliked Russian president Vladimir Putin personally but “admired him as a political operator” because of the extent of his control over Russia. He added: “We provoked this war. Of course it’s his fault, he’s used what we’ve done as an excuse”. The Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats have long accused Farage of being an apologist for the Russian president. Farage told Robinson “Do you know what I am? I’m a fighter, I’m a warrior, I’m a campaigner”. The Reform UK leader said “I stand up against big institutions when they behave badly, whether they’re banks or out of touch bureaucracies based in Brussels, and very often, I win.” Farage accepted that a claim he made saying the UK had moved from being the “world’s seventh-biggest exporter to the world’s fourth-biggest exporter” after Brexit referred only to services. Asked why exports in goods had not similarly benefited, Farage blamed net zero policies, saying they had “de-industrialised Britain”. Discussing migration, Farage repeatedly said that people arriving in the UK could bring their mothers with them, which is not the case. On net zero, asked if he still believed King Charles was “an eco-loony”, Farage replied: “He wasn’t the king then, and I can’t speak ill of the monarch obviously.” Asking about Reform’s own fiscal plans, set out this week in the party’s manifesto, Robinson seemed unconvinced by Farage’s explanations as to how the party would cut public spending enough to make mass tax cuts. Farage repeatedly pushed the idea that moving the income tax threshold to £20,000 would take the lowest paid out of the tax system and get more people off benefits and into work. Farage defended the Liz Truss mini-budget, which at the time he called “the best Conservative budget since the 1980s”. He told the BBC interveiwer “There were a lot of things here that were pro-growth and pro-business. Some of the thinking was right, the delivery was wrong, the timing was appalling.” The Reform leader said it was important to protect the NHS being free at the point of delivery, but failed to explain how a GP appointment is free in the French-style system he is proposing, when in France there is a €25 fee for an appointment. “It gets refunded” he said, while also saying it could be forfeit if the apporintment was missed. Asked if Reform attracted people with vile views because of his own views, Farage called this “cobblers, absolute cobblers”, quoting Martin Luther King and saying he believed in meritocracy. Asked why he once praised Enoch Powell and criticised Rishi Sunak by saying he “doesn’t understand our culture”, Farage said this simply referred to the prime minister being “too upper-class”. Reform has blamed a vetting company it employed for failing to check what candidates had said. But Farage appeared to play down the seriousness of many of the comments, saying: “We’ve also had an awful lot of candidates being stitched up in the most extraordinary way with quotes being taken out of context.”