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Anyone who has ever sat on a jury or taken part in a Crown Court trial as an advocate, witness, expert or Judge, knows that to dismiss them as no more than an exercise in administering the criminal law and determining guilt or innocence is a massive over-simplification.

A Crown Court trial is first and foremost about people. Individuals who, because of poor luck, bad decision making, a particular predilection towards a criminality that sits in their characters or a combination of all three, have ended up accused of a crime, or as the victims of a crime.

Their narratives and background often go way beyond the strict confines of the law and the legal process, and so, we as lawyers try to fit their behaviour and their characters into the process as best we can. Together with judges we strive for fairness, for objectivity and to ensure that the criminal justice system achieves the goal of protecting society from those individuals who commit crime and ensuring that the criminals in turn receive the correct sentence.

As I leave Court every day, I do a roll-call, when I ask myself if the people I've dealt with that day, as either a prosecution or defence advocate are in the right place: is the kid who dealt drugs at school been given a chance to rehabilitate himself via a suspended sentence; are the men who fought in the street with bottles and sticks properly behind bars; is the young women who was raped content that the man who subjected her to her ordeal has been properly punished. Overwhelmingly, the answer will be yes - not because of any particular skill by me, but because of the collective efforts of the police, the court staff, the probation service, the CPS, defence lawyers and the Judiciary.

And Juries play a pivotal role in that process.

'Robert Jenrick's Authoritarian Plans for the Justice System Are Straight Out of the Trump Playbook'

One only has to look at Trump's America to see what happens when a government, led by a narcissist with an authoritarian bent, decides that he is more powerful than any court of law, argues Gareth Roberts

Gareth Roberts

Twelve ordinary people, given the extraordinary role of judging the evidence and casting a verdict on strangers that will almost always be life-changing for them.

They sit in the theatre of Court, twelve pairs of eyes, watching and listening, taking in every nuance of the evidence, recording in their minds every time a witness flinches or procrastinates and every tearful denial or assertion, and then at the end, they are given a law lecture by the Judge and go off to the sanctity of their room to consider what they've seen and to apportion guilt, if they can. I have never been in a jury room, or sat on a jury, but I can only imagine, that once they are discussing the evidence, and asking the questions they are directed to consider, the fact that you have 12 different people, with different experiences of life and different perspectives is invaluable as they take up the challenge of reaching a true verdict.

I say that with confidence, because, in my 26 years as a barrister, during which I have watched many hundreds of juries go through this process, I can think of only a handful of occasions where I thought that they've reached the wrong verdict.

Labour's announcement that they are considering replacing juries with judges for all but the most 'serious offences' is an attempt to mend a system by smashing it into tiny bits.

The principle of being tried by your peers is an important one. The criminal law is not something that can be imposed upon us without our consent, it must be something that we all feel part of, that we all buy into and trust. The jury system is a vital part of that process, because it brings ordinary people into the system and gives them a role that brings it alive...

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The BBC has issued an apology after one of its presenters failed to challenge a climate-sceptic lobbyist who runs a group that has received funding from fossil-fuel interests.

It is the first apology to be issued by the BBC since the row over a Panorama documentary on Donald Trump blew up last week, leading to the resignation of the corporation's Director General, Tim Davie, and CEO of News Deborah Turness. It has thrown the public broadcaster into chaos with threats of a $1-5billion lawsuit from President Trump.

The latest apology follows a 17th July interview by Annabel Amos on BBC Radio Northampton, where the Scottish campaigner Andrew Montford was introduced as the 'Director of the campaign group Net Zero Watch'.

Net Zero Watch is the campaign arm of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), a registered charity which does not disclose its funders and which publishes reports criticising the push to reduce carbon emissions. No explanation of its funding or allegations of denying climate science was presented by the interviewer.

The GWPF has lobbied against Government plans to reach Net Zero by 2050 and has played down the link between man made climate change and extreme weather events, stating last year that it is a "mistaken belief that weather extremes - such as heatwaves, flooding, droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes and wildfires - are more common and more intense today because of climate change".

The GWPF was founded by Margaret Thatcher's former Chancellor, the late Nigel Lawson, in 2009 to fight what it describes as "extremely damaging and harmful policies" designed to mitigate climate change, as climate outlet DeSmog has reported.

As Byline Times has previously reported, funders of the group have also donated significant sums to the Conservative Party, including its current leader Kemi Badenoch, who has since abandoned her party's support for Net Zero.

Conservative Baron and hedge fund billionaire Michael Hintze, who founded the asset management firm CQS (now Manulife Investment Asset Management), has given money to GWPF, alongside fellow Conservative peer Lord Moynihan.

While the GWPF says it "does not accept donations either from energy companies or from anyone with a significant interest in an energy company," the Guardian revealed in 2022 that a major donor to its US arm had $30m (£24m) of shares in 22 companies working in coal, oil and gas. Most of the cash from its US arm, American Friends of the GWPF, goes to fund its UK work. The group has said it follows all transparency laws.

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GWPF's current director Benny Peiser has previously claimed it is "extraordinary that anyone should think there is a climate crisis". The group was recently subject to a Charity Commission probe, which led to Net Zero Watch being distanced from its charity 'owner'.

However, Net Zero Watch still links to its 'friends' GWFP across its website, while its Privacy Policy suggests data is shared when people "become a member of the GWPF." The two organisations maintain the same 55 Tufton Street address.

Montford has previously said of global warming: "We don't know and I haven't seen anything credible to persuade me there's a problem" - dismissing the scientific consensus that humans are significantly contributing to the world's changing climate through burning fossil fuels.

A BBC complaint from an environmental group,...

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The former Conservative Levelling Up Secretary and now editor of the Spectator, Michael Gove, has been selected as a judge for the 2026 Orwell Prize awards, despite his record of dodging media scrutiny and allegations of 'stifling' critical journalists.

During his time in Government Gove was accused of deliberately obstructing Freedom of Information requests by journalists, while his aides were also accused of setting up an anonymous Twitter account in order to target members of the media.

The prestigious media awards have now appointed him as the chair of their panel judging reporting on homelessness - despite what critics describe as a questionable track record on the issue.

During Gove's time in office, the age of first time buyers rose, housebuilding targets were repeatedly missed, and homelessness more than doubled, an increase which has been partly blamed on multiple poor policy decisions made under Gove's party.

That includes the party's freeze on local housing allowance (LHA) rates for four (2020-2024) years while costs skyrocketed (though Gove is said to have advocated for an increase to then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in 2023), stalling on putting a stop to no-fault evictions, soon to be outlawed by Labour as part of the Renters' Rights Act, and overseeing a collapse in social house-building.

The Conservatives' time in power also saw a massive increase in people forced to live in temporary accommodation. In May 2010, there were 50,400 households in temporary accommodation, a figure up by 144% by June 2024, with the number of children up 120%.

Gove has previously admitted "regret" over the situation, telling the BBC's Today Programme after it was revealed in 2024 that that nearly 112,000 households were living in temporary accommodation at that time, 63% of which included families with dependent children, that: "The biggest issue overall is that whether it's in the private rental sector, the socially rented sector, or homes to buy, we still need to increase the supply of homes."

EXCLUSIVE

'Nigel Farage's Plan to Scrap Nature Protections Would Speed 'Demise' of UK Countryside'

Reform UK's vow to scrap thousands of nature laws risks pushing Britain's depleted countryside into irreversible decline, argues Stuart Spray

Stuart Spray

One Orwell Prize judge, who chose to remain anonymous, spoke to Byline Times about Gove's inclusion among Orwell judges focusing on homelessness "seems a strange choice considering Gove was at the heart of Government during a period when the number of people sleeping roughly doubled."

Also drawn into question has been Gove's role while in Government of attacking journalists and operating a culture of transparency in departments under his remit.

In 2022, openDemocracy reported on the Cabinet Office's 'Clearing House' unit, an entity itself deemed 'Orwellian' by critics. The Clearing House was accused of vetting and blacklisting Freedom of Information (FOI) requests from journalists.

It was Gove, then a sitting cabinet minister, who attacked the publication in an official Government statement, calling reporting into Clearing House "ridiculous and tenuous", though the department spent nearly £40,000 in taxpayer funds in trying to block the release of information pertaining to it.

In court, a judge sharply criticised the Cabinet Office for presenting "misleading" documents, while noting a "profound lack of transparency" about the unit's operation, which might "extend to ministers".

A later release published on Clearing House by the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee (PACAC), prompted by the reporting, found that there "was evidence of poor FOI administration in the Cabinet Office and across Government". The Clearing House was shuttered in 2022.

Peter Geoghegan, former editor-in-chi...

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Mist gathers over a chalk stream at first light, the surface broken by rising mayflies. A barn owl drifts low over a hedgerow. These moments of quiet resilience are becoming rarer. One in six UK species is now at risk of extinction and average populations have fallen by 19% since 1970 - evidence of a deepening crisis in Britain's natural world.

Into this landscape steps Reform UK. Nigel Farage claims his party is the "voice of the people", promising a government that would defend British culture, identity and values. But behind the populist slogans and patriotic rhetoric lies a devastating agenda for nature that, according to conservation groups, risks accelerating the decline of already fragile ecosystems.

A recent YouGov poll found that 70% of adults surveyed in Great Britain want stronger environmental protections. Yet Reform UK, which says it is preparing for government, has no credible plans to reverse biodiversity loss, safeguard vital habitats or restore degraded ecosystems.

A Plan to Scrap the Foundations of Conservation

At the centre of Reform UK's policy platform is a pledge to scrap, "with immediate effect", more than 6,700 retained EU regulations - among them the Habitats Directive, the Birds Directive and long-standing water-pollution controls that form the backbone of Britain's environmental protections.

Removing these critical nature laws would ease restrictions on development and intensive agriculture, potentially opening the door to habitat destruction on a significant scale.

It would place some of Britain's most important protected areas at risk, including:

Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs), which safeguard nationally important wildlife and geological features

Special Areas of Conservation (SACs), created to protect rare habitats and species of European significance

Special Protection Areas (SPAs), designated to conserve vulnerable and migratory bird populations

These protections underpin the survival of natural landscapes that still support the UK's remaining biodiversity strongholds.

'The 'Eco-Populist' Cost-Cutting Budget Rachel Reeves Should Really Deliver'

Only a radical approach to our broken privatised energy system can make British bill-payers genuinely better off, argues Donnachadh McCarthy

Donnachadh McCarthy

Fragile Habitats on the Front Line

Among the natural ecosystems most vulnerable to deregulation are chalk streams - a globally rare habitat found mostly in England - along with ancient woodlands, limestone pavement and coastal landscapes such as salt marshes and dune systems.

The UK's peatlands, which act as significant carbon sinks and support species like the golden plover and sundew, could also face renewed exploitation for peat cutting.

River systems, already under pressure from sewage discharges and agricultural run-off, would deteriorate further without enforceable clean-water standards.

Turning Farmland into a Biodiversity Battlefield

Reform UK's plans also target Agri-Environment Schemes (AES) - including the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI), Countryside Stewardship (CS) and Landscape Recovery - which currently pay farmers to restore wetlands, maintain hedgerows and protect pollinators.

Scrapping environmental conditions tied to farm subsidies would effectively end these schemes. Natural England's most recent assessment found AES were boosting wildlife populations such as birds and butterflies, increasing landscape-scale biodiversity and improving water quality and flood resilience. All of this, campaigners say, would be lost under Reform UK.

Farage has additionally promised legislation to ban nature-conservation and rewilding projects on farmland deemed "productive", and to prevent Natural England - the Government's statutory adviser on the natural environment in England - from ...

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This week's budget provides a real opportunity for the UK to adopt an eco-populist approach to consumer energy bills.

This eco-populist energy system would be green, energy independent, secure, efficient, cheap for industry, eliminate fuel poverty and any extra costs would fall on the rich.

Yet how we currently structure energy bills penalises the poor, causes appalling fuel poverty, slows the green transition, is inefficient, dependent on fossil fuel imports, been sold to profiteering billionaires and is really expensive.

For a clean energy system, we need to stop using fossil gas boilers and cookers and close remaining gas power stations as fast as possible.

Therefore electricity prices must be cheaper than gas. Yet insanely successive governments have heaped nearly all of the costs of the green transition, social energy programmes and privatisation profits onto electricity bills, rather than onto taxation and fossil fuels.

The electricity price is now FOUR times higher per unit than gas ( 26.4p versus 6.3p).

The average electricity bill is £900 and gas £850, even though we use far more gas. This is 75% higher than 2020, largely due to gas inflation following the Ukrainian invasion.

A recent parliamentary report found that a staggering 13 million UK households do not turn the heating on due to cost. No wonder the UK suffers a tragic winter elderly death spike compared to other nations.

Most people do not realise that the costs of social energy programmes are not paid for by taxes according to income, but are levied on electricity bills which are not.

What are all these extra levies and costs added to our bills?

The Real Energy Scandal The Media Won't Tell You About

Fossil fuel interests are colluding with billionaire-owned media companies to block the UK's transition towards a cheaper and greener future, argues Donnachadh McCarthy

Donnachadh McCarthy

The largest is the profit for the privatised electricity and gas national grids and suppliers. The Abu Dhabi and US billionaire owned National Grid plc made £5.3 billion in operating profits and the Australian owned National Gas Transmission plc made £600 million.

This equates to £198 per UK household and Unite just reported that National Grid plc profit margins were an extortionate 38%.

The combined profits of all the privatised parts of the energy market, including the supply and billing corporations are estimated by Unite to be £500 per household.

We also have to pay constraint payments, due to the failure of the National Grid to invest its profits in actually building the national grid and storage needed for the proliferating cheap green electricity providers.

Constraint payments pay providers to turn wind turbines off when the grid does not have the capacity to accept or store abundant production.

These balancing costs are about £53 but may rise to £200 by 2030, if they continue to fail to build the required infrastructure. The investment needed is about ten years of its profits.

The Warm Home Discount provides an inadequate grant of £150 to some low-income households and adds another £22 to bills.

The costs of the ECO home insulation scheme for low-income families to reduce gas heating bills is also paid from electricity bills rather than taxes. It adds £56/household.

A staggering £4.2 billion is now owed by households suffering from fuel poverty. £70 is added to bills to cover these debts. Therefore, the poor are paying to cover the bad debts of other poor people, rather than richer taxpayers.

It gets even more punitive for poorer people paying by standard credit, rather than by the direct debits usually used by the better off. They get charged an extra credit premium of £135 due to higher bad-debt risk.

The Gas Electricity Marginal Pricing subsidy adds another £65/year. This co...

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Reform UK's flagship Kent County council has been accused of "hurtling towards financial oblivion" after new financial documents released show that Nigel Farage's supposedly "cost-cutting" local authority has racked up a £46.5m budget overspend forecast for this financial year.

The overspend represents 3% of the overall budget and has increased by 66% in just three months - from £27.9m in the first quarter to £46.5m in the second. Reform was elected to lead the authority last May.

The council's own analysis describes the situation as "critical". In a report to Cabinet on November 19th, Reform deputy council leader Cllr Brian Collins and the council's corporate director of finance state: "The scale of the forecast overspend is unprecedented and represents a critical risk to the financial resilience of the authority."

"This situation demands immediate action. If not addressed in the current financial year, it will have a severe impact on our reserves and will impact our budget position for 2026/27."

Reform UK had issued a leaflet ahead of May's local elections which claimed the party would "reduce waste and cut your taxes" - complete with a smiling picture of Nigel Farage. The party went on to secure a hefty majority.

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It now appears almost certain that council tax will have to rise roughly in line with other councils also facing the strain.

Lib Dem opposition leader Cllr Antony Hook told Byline Times: "I think it will be close to 5%. The administration indicated as much in September."

"We still don't have a draft budget - usually we have one by November, but the administration won't present one until January, leaving very little time for scrutiny or improvements. But budget assumptions so far are based on a 5% council tax rise and an expected 1.5% increase in the council tax base."

That suggests that if the council tax rise is less than 5%, millions more pounds in cuts will have to be found.

"Even with those assumptions, the council still needs to find £46 million in cuts, and there's been no transparency about how," Cllr Hook added.

The figures show a £51m overspend on adult social care this year in the authority, often described as the largest in the country. Residential care services for older people are seeing a £22.4m overspend, and community-based services £16.3m.

It represents a 7.2% overspend in the department. Meanwhile, the council is set to miss its targets to find savings for adult social care spending by £20.9m this year.

The Reform-run council promised millions in social care savings "they knew they couldn't deliver," argues Cllr Hook.

The deficit in the council's schools budget also appears to be spiralling out of control. The deficit forecast for the schools budget this year is set to reach £133.4m, up from £97.5m last year.

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Council officers originally expected to break even on the schools deficit by 2027-28 - but are now expecting a £125m deficit instead. Much of the surge relates to increased spending providing specialist provision to pupils with Special Educational Needs (SEND). The number of pupils requiring specialist support in the county has increased to 18,367, up from 17,209 last year.

Many of those are being sent to independent school placements, at an average cost of £55,727 per pupil, a figure which has also risen substantially over t...

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When President Donald Trump threatened to sue the BBC for $1 billion over its edit of his speech from 6 January 2021, when thousands of rioters descended on the US Capitol building, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage immediately took to his show on GB News to defend the President.

Describing the BBC's edit of his speech as "totally outrageous" he told his viewers that "I spent a few minutes with him [the US President]… And his basic thought was, 'Is this how you treat your best ally in the world?' And I get it."

Six months earlier, under chandeliers and American flags at a Florida Republican fundraiser, Farage grinned for the cameras as he shook the hand of a convicted 6 January rioter - a man once photographed stealing Nancy Pelosi's lectern.

At the time, it was widely reported that Farage had missed PMQs to attend the event. Byline Times can reveal that the photo captured more than a moment. It marked the meeting point of two movements - Donald Trump's Project 2025 machine in the United States and a rising populist right in the UK.

The same pro-Trump political operative who arranged Farage's Florida appearance later brought his network to London, launching a new lobbying vehicle aimed at exporting Trump's evangelical Project 2025 agenda across the Atlantic, and working secretly to support Farage.

It was in March 2025, at a glitzy fundraising event hosted by the Florida Republican Party in Tallahassee, that Farage posed for a photograph shaking hands with a convicted 6 January 2021 rioter. The event - a Florida Republican 'Disruptors Dinner' fundraiser whose VIP tables sold for $25,000 apiece - featured the Reform UK leader as the man who delivered Brexit.

Seven months later he belatedly registered receiving a fee for the "speaking engagement" from a company called Imperial Independent Media LLC (IIM), operating from Washington but registered in Alaska. His parliamentary register shows three installments totalling £25,972.

By failing to declare the payment at the time, Farage had breached parliamentary rules. He conceded that his Florida visit should have been declared earlier and apologised for the "error".

By the time he disclosed the fees in October, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards had already opened a probe into the late registration.

The name of the paying company barely registered in Westminster. In Washington, however, it can be found in Justice Department files as the vehicle of a registered foreign agent - Zachary G. Freeman - whose clients include foreign political parties, a pro-Putin Balkan government, and a London policy organisation led by a former Conservative Cabinet minister.

Byline Times can reveal that Farage's benefactor is a pro-Trump political lobbyist embedded in the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 ecosystem - the US conservative plan to dismantle climate policy, rights for women and ethnic minorities, and democratic safeguards. He also has ties to evangelical groups in the US with a history of anti-LGBTQ and anti-abortion activism - and appears to be working actively with Farage to bring this Project 2025-style ideology to Britain.

EXCLUSIVE

Farage's Trillion Pound Black Hole: The Real Cost of Reform UK's Mass Deportation Plan

Exclusive: Reform's plan, which it claims would net huge savings over the coming decades, would actually cost the UK about £70-90bn over the next ten years alone, new analysis of official statistics and forecasts suggests

Nafeez Ahmed

'The Next Prime Minister of Great Britain'

In the run-up to the 2024 US presidential election, Zachary Freeman worked with the Heritage Foundation's State Department planning team in Washington DC. The group's work fed into Project 2025.

Project 2025 was a 900-page policy manual produced by the Heritage Foundation under its 'Mandate for Leadersh...

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Former Green Party Leader, and Byline Times columnist Caroline Lucas has called for a new pact with the EU that could deliver abundant cheap, clean energy and reduce pollution dramatically, all while robustly tackling the climate crisis.

In a new campaign video, European Movement UK Co-President Caroline Lucas has urged the Government to work towards a new climate partnership with the European Union, warning that key environmental and energy challenges - including the climate crisis, nature restoration, dirty air and water, and high energy costs - "can't be fixed by one nation alone."

It comes as Britons brace for another winter of soaring gas and electricity prices, and as more than 80 countries push for a roadmap to quit fossil fuels at the UN's COP30 climate conference this week.

The push for renewed cooperation is set out in full in A New Agenda for UK-EU Energy, Climate, and Environment Cooperation. It was authored by Lucas' European Movement UK - a cross-party pro-European organisation founded in 1949 to promote closer ties between Britain and the EU.

Britain's self-imposed exile from Europe's integrated systems is at the heart of Britain's soaring prices, the report shows, warning of "mounting evidence of divergence" in everything from energy trading to pesticide regulation.

The campaign group proposes a new "Energy, Climate and Environment Partnership" that would restore win-win cooperation without re-entering the single market.

Here's what they're proposing.

The Government Has Cut Air Pollution Funds to Councils by 99% as Illegal Levels of Pollution Shorten Lives

New data shows just £1.5 million was given to councils in England in the past year to tackle air pollution - down from a high of £225 million in 2021

Josiah Mortimer

Cheap, Clean Energy

One major focus is the fractured state of UK-EU energy cooperation. Since Brexit, the UK has been operating outside the EU's Internal Electricity Market (IEM), which streamlined the flow of electricity to the UK by automatically allocating it where it is cheapest and most needed. The upshot? UK energy prices are rocketing.

Energy UK, a trade association for the UK energy industry, says that being outside of the EU market is adding £120 million - £370 million to energy bills.

As part of Keir Starmer's 'Post-Brexit Reset' in May, the UK Government began negotiations to rejoin the IEM.

While this will likely involve financial contributions from the UK, European Movement UK argues that rejoining the IEM would reduce volatility and unlock more investment in offshore wind.

Modelling in the report suggests this could cut up to £13bn from the cost of building out North Sea infrastructure by 2050, a vast improvement on planning offshore grids in isolation which risks Britain falling behind its neighbours.

North Sea Powerhouse

Another key proposal is that the UK seek full membership of the North Seas Energy Cooperation (NSEC), a regional forum promoting the development of offshore wind power amongst ten North Sea countries. Britain currently retains observer status, excluded from key decisions and long-term planning. The report says that UK developers are currently unable to exert influence over the development's objectives or its potential impacts on marine life.

Lucas argues today that the UK should "play a full role in transforming the North Sea into Europe's clean energy powerhouse."

As stressed by RenewableUK, a trade association for the renewable energy industry, large-scale wind development is inherently cross-border. The UK therefore risks slower deployment without structured European cooperation. This report finds that reconnecting with EU mechanisms could cut up to £13 billion from the cost of meeting offshore wind targets by 2050.

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Nathan Gill, the former leader of Reform UK in Wales, and a trusted lieutenant of Nigel Farage,was sentenced to ten and a half years in prison on Friday, for the crime of taking bribes from Oleg Voloshyn, a pro-Russian Ukrainian politician, in order to repeat pro-Kremlin talking points in the European Parliament.

The case sheds a light on the extent the self-proclaimed "patriots" of the British far-right were prepared to go to help Ukrainian politicians who plotted to be installed as Moscow's new puppet government in Kiev.

While it was SO15, the Metropolitan Police's Counterterrorism Command, which glued together the evidence that was needed to secure successful prosecution, the actual credit should go to the FBI. It was the Americans, who actually extracted the evidence: WhatsApp messages from Voloshyn's phone, in which he discussed secretly paying Gill. That was in July 2021, when President Biden was in the White House and the Kremlin was preparing to invade Ukraine.

That timing is at the centre of the relationship of Voloshyn and Gill, in the context of Moscow's strategy between 2018 and 2020, when the offences took place.

EXCLUSIVE

'Thick as Thieves': Nathan Gill and Nigel Farage's Putin Problem

Far from being distant from the Reform UK Leader, insiders told Byline Times that the former MEP convicted of bribery was one of Farage's closest aides, while we reveal how Gill worked on the Kremlin's strategic plan to crush Ukrainian independence with 'Moscow's Man in Ukraine'

Peter Jukes

Emboldened by the UK voting to leave (and thus weaken) both the EU and our country, the objective the Kremlin has been pursuing for years, with Europe now preoccupied with its uncertain future and Britain set to face serious economic problems for a very long time, Putin had set his sights on Kiev.

The Kremlin was mobilising its military forces within its borders and taking to task its allies outside them to distract and divide European response for when the attack came.

Long Before the Onset of War

"Mobilisation and concentration of forces happen 'unnoticed… long before' the onset of war," wrote Soviet military theorist Georgii Isserson in the 1940s, a line later cited approvingly by Russian Chief of the General Staff and Deputy Minister of Defence Valery Gerasimov in his infamous 2013 article on modern warfare, showing how preparation for war is conducted through deception.

In Russia itself, the military completed the forward deployment of major formations along Ukraine's borders, including the 20th Guards Combined Arms Army in Voronezh and the 8th Guards Combined Arms Army near Rostov-on-Don, both placed in permanent positions facing Ukrainian territory.

From May 2018 onward, following the opening of the Kerch Bridge between Russia and the illegally annexed Crimean Peninsula, Russian forces intensified inspections and delays of vessels bound for Mariupol and Berdyansk and progressively restricted Ukrainian access to the Sea of Azov.

In April 2019, the Kremlin introduced a simplified procedure for granting Russian citizenship to residents of the occupied parts of Donetsk and Luhansk, and by mid-2020 more than 100,000 residents had received Russian passports.

In 2020, Ukrainian intelligence publicly assessed that Russia might attempt an operation to seize the North-Crimean Canal, while UN General Assembly resolution 75/29 the same year recorded the continued militarisation of Crimea and repeated closures of Black Sea and Azov Sea areas by Russian forces.

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Former UKIP and Brexit Party MEP Nathan Gill was sentenced at the Old Bailey on Friday to ten and a half years in prison, after pleading guilty to taking bribes to take part in a pro-Russian influence campaign.

Judge Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb said the "corrosive damage to public life" caused by Gill's actions would be enduring.

"Your misconduct has ramifications far beyond personal honor which is now irretrievably damaged," she told Gill.

"It erodes public confidence in democracy when politicians succumb to financial inducement, the public can no longer rely on the veracity of political debate, which may be tainted by disinformation."

The sentence sets a clear legal benchmark - leaving the way clear for the UK Parliament to finally hold a much-needed inquiry into Kremlin meddling in domestic affairs.

In the UK, this inquiry cannot help but look at events surrounding the EU Referendum itself as a major intervention by the Kremlin.

Nathan Gill - one of Farage's closest confidantes in UKIP and the Brexit Party and a leading Reform UK figure in Wales - was convicted for eight counts of bribery, covering payments between December 2018 and July 2019 in return for statements and media interventions that reflected the Kremlin's line on Ukraine.

The bribes occurred during a turbulent period after Prime Minister Theresa May had called out Putin in Lord Mayor's Banquet speech in late 2017 - "we know what you're doing" - for election interference, information warfare, hybrid ops after the invasion of Eastern Ukraine and annexation of Crimea.

The Kremlin had responded by attempting to assassinate the Russian defector Sergei Skripal in Salisbury with the deadly nerve agent Novichok, which ended up killing a local resident Dawn Sturgess.

Putin's exasperation at the Brexit stalemate in Parliament dominates his end of year press conference in Moscow, during which he complains that the "will of the people" is not being enacted, and making an explicit comparison with Donald Trump's election the same year: They don't want to recognise [Trump's] victory… It's the same in Britain: Brexit happened, but nobody wants to implement it."

"It is in this context of Brexit deadlock and mounting Anglo-Russian tensions that Gill starts receiving WhatsApp messages and payments from Oleg Voloshyn.

EXCLUSIVE

'Thick as Thieves': Nathan Gill and Nigel Farage's Putin Problem

Far from being distant from the Reform UK Leader, insiders told Byline Times that the former MEP convicted of bribery was one of Farage's closest aides, while we reveal how Gill worked on the Kremlin's strategic plan to crush Ukrainian independence with 'Moscow's Man in Ukraine'

Peter Jukes

Oleg Voloshyn and the Medvedchuk Network

Gill's conviction creates a documented, criminal link between a British Eurosceptic MEP and a pro-Kremlin influence channel.

However, what is often under-reported is how closely Gill's paymaster Oleg (Oleh) Voloshyn was connected to the most important Russian power networks around Viktor Medvedchuk, Dmitry Medvedev and, ultimately, Vladimir Putin.

On 20 January 2022, the US Treasury sanctioned Oleg (Oleh) Voloshyn as one of four pro-Kremlin Ukrainians "engaged in Russian government-directed influence activities" against Ukraine, working with Russian intelligence-linked actors. He is named in the press release.

In May 2025, the EU Council added Voloshyn to its sanctions list for "Russian hybrid threats", alongside Viktor Medvedchuk and media executive Artem Marchevskyi, describing how Medvedchuk, "through his associates Artem Marchevskyi and Oleg Voloshin", used media platforms to disseminate Russian state narratives and interfere in European politics.

Apart from his media activities, Voloshyn was an MP pro Russian political party 'For Life' led by Viktor Medvedchuk.

Medvedchu...