Pranksters have targeted Nigel Farage during a campaign speech in Essex by lowering a banner of Russian president Vladimir Putin behind him. Political campaigners, Led by Donkeys, claimed responsibility for the act in Walton on Saturday night.
The group tweeted video footage showing Reform UK's leader delivering a speech on stage as a large poster of Putin and the caption "I [heart] Nigel" slowly appears to his left.
It then cuts to a line which reads: "Nigel Farage says Putin is the world leader he 'admires the most' and blames the West for Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine".
While some audience members could be heard laughing, there were loud cheers when Mr Farage said someone at the Columbine Centre where the meeting was being held had to get the sack.
He vowed: "We will have them make sure that is the case." Mr Farage then joined a chorus of calls from the audience to rip the banner down.
Two men then struggled to remove the poster while one angry audience member yelled: "Go on, rip it down."
Led by Donkeys tweeted video of the stunt along with the comment: "We just dropped in on Farage's election rally with a beaming picture of Putin. Nigel was not pleased".
The stunt comes after Reform UK's leader told the BBC's The Panorama Interviews Friday programme that the West "provoked this war", in reference to countries in eastern Europe joining NATO and the European Union, and Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Asked about his views of Putin, Mr Farage said: "I said I disliked him as a person, but I admired him as a political operator because he's managed to take control of running Russia."
Mr Farage, later writing in the Telegraph, urged readers not to "blame" him for "telling the truth about Putin's war".
Former prime minister Boris Johnson accused Mr Farage of "parroting Putin's lies", adding: "This is nauseating ahistorical drivel and more Kremlin propaganda. Nobody provoked Putin. Nobody 'poked the bear with a stick."
Reform has mired itself in high-profile spats with the BBC and Channel 4 this week amid claims the former rigged a Question Time audience and the latter planted a "jobbing actor" in an undercover report where a campaigner for the party made bigoted and racist remarks.
Reform's leader said he refuses to appear on the BBC's flagship politics show Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg unless the broadcaster apologises for the "rigged" audience he was confronted with on Friday night's Question Time.
The BBC said the audience was made up of "broadly similar levels of representation from Reform UK and the Green Party" - Green co-leader Adrian Ramsay was the other guest - "with other parties represented too", along with some voters still making up their minds.
Channel 4 has denied Mr Parker, who was filmed using a racist slur to describe Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, was paid by or known to Channel 4 News before the expose on Mr Farage's General Election campaign in the constituency of Clacton.
Reform, in a letter to the Electoral Commission, said it was "wholly unbelievable" for it to be a coincidence and Channel 4's piece "cannot be described as anything short of election interference".
Meanwhile, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reported it has monitored five co-ordinated Facebook pages spouting Kremlin talking points, with some expressing support for Mr Farage's party.
In a statement published by The Sunday Times, Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden said: "These revelations reveal the real risk our democracy faces in this uncertain world."
