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It took Nigel Farage more than two weeks to finally respond to Nathan Gill's conviction for eight counts of bribery for taking payments from a pro-Russian Ukrainian MP and close associate of one of Putin's closest allies, Viktor Medvedchuk.

Speaking on the campaign trail in Caerphilly for a forthcoming Senedd byelection, Farage said he was "stunned" that his close associate had taken bribes: "I'm the only one [in Reform] that really knew him, going back a long way."

Despite Farage's concession, after multiple denials from Reform UK, that he was close to Gill, the admission only raises more questions.

Farage's claim that he was the "only one" in Reform UK who knew Gill contradicts the information Byline Times has received from former MEPs that Gill and Tice worked closely together during the Brexit Party era.

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

Meanwhile, the Reform UK leader's denial that he knew anything about Gill's pro-Russian activities in Ukraine is even more problematic.

"I didn't know anything about it, all I knew was that he'd been to Ukraine," he told BBC Wales. "I told him not to go; he defied me and went. I was completely unaware of any statements that he made."

Byline Times has been told by various sources over the years that Farage has maintained a close interest in Ukraine's conflict with Russia, as the public record of his comments about it can attest.

At a plenary session of the EU Parliament on 16 September 2014, after the invasion of East Ukraine and annexation of Crimea, both Gill and Farage made nearly identical statements claiming an 'uprising' had overthrown the "democratically elected Pro-Russian President", Viktor Yanukovych, and criticising the EU for supporting the Maidan Revolution.

But Farage's ignorance of this particular set of pro-Russian influencers around Nathan Gill is even more specific and questionable.

Oleh Voloshyn, indicted as Gill's paymaster and loyal servant to Putin's close ally, Viktor Medvedchuk, was married to another employee of the pro-Russian media mogul's TV channels, Nadia Borodi.

Also known as Nadia Sass, Borodi worked as a presenter on Medvedchuk's Channel 112 and has been described as a "Russian propagandist" by the French investigative news site Desk Russie

On 12 December 2018, within six days of receiving his first bribe to spread pro-Kremlin messages, Nathan Gill addressed a plenary session of the EU Parliament about an EU-Ukraine Association Agreement. He specifically spoke up to criticise the Ukrainian government for threatening to ban Medvedchuk's TV stations Channel 112 and NewsOne for pro-Russian propaganda.

"The Ukrainian Government is in the process of banning the two biggest TV channels in the country, Channel 112 and NewsOne, and proper democratic procedures are being ignored four months before an election," he told the Parliament: "How can this be: that the President of Ukraine can potentially close down independent media just before an election?"

However, Gill did not declare that he was in the pay of Medvedchuk's associates, who filmed him on Medvedchuk's live station NewsOne.

As if that wasn't enough, Gill followed up his major parliamentary intervention with an interview with Channel 112 correspondent Nadia Borodi outside the media wall of the EU Parliament.

Wearing the same outfit, but without the microphone, Borodi snapped herself with Farage outside the European Parliament on what appears to be the same day.

She retweeted this image on X last year with the message: "I w...