Rory Stewart

If you're right, 92% of our listeners haven't heard of Nathan Gill.

So Nathan Gill was a politician associated with all the different incarnations of Nigel Farage's party, which was, of course, UKIP, and then the Brexit party, and then reform, and he kept moving as Farage moved between them.

And he was their leader in Wales.

Yeah.

He was the member of the European Parliament for UKIP.

He was then in the Welsh National Assembly.

Then he was re-elected in the Brexit party and became leader of reform in Wales.

And in 2018, 2019, he began to develop these very close relationships.

Particularly with a man called Oleh Voloshin, who was a Ukrainian member of parliament, very, very close to Ukrainian oligarchs, to a man called Medvedchuk, and also to a whole...

media industry.

And what they began doing is giving cash to Nathan Gill.

It now turns out they probably gave him something like 30,000, 40,000 pounds.

It turns out to be extremely cheap to bribe British members of parliament, 5,000 pounds at a time.

It's not like a million pounds in a thing.

And what they got him to do was to read out speeches in the European parliament

defending this media enterprise.

It's basically a pro-Russian media operation that was running in Ukraine, attacking Zelensky and making the Russian point of view and doing all it could to undermine the Ukrainian position against Russia.

The Ukrainians were moving to shut down this media.

which they thought was a Russian push of influence.

Nathan Gill gives a speech in European Parliament, which is worth bearing in mind when you're being suspicious of politicians.