Tommy Robinson’s ties to Russia
Elon Musk is promoting a far-right agitator who has regularly aped Putin’s propaganda.
Elon Musk is a threat to UK security. Over recent days he has spread baseless conspiracy theories about Labour ministers over their supposed role in the grooming gangs scandal, almost certainly jeopardising their safety.
Musk’s increasingly unhinged posts have been made in support of the far-right thug Tommy Robinson (real name: Stephen Yaxley-Lennon), who Musk now seems to idolise.
This puts Musk in league with an individual who has cosied up to Vladimir Putin’s Russia – a state that has for years waged war against liberal democracy in Britain and beyond.
I have been tracking Yaxley-Lennon’s links to Russia for years, and wanted to share what I and others have found.
Though direct ties (financial or otherwise) between Robinson and the Kremlin have never been established, we know that the far-right convict has explored transferring his money to Russia, has been a regular guest on Russian state media (including during trips to Moscow and St Petersburg), and has frequently amplified pro-Putin disinformation.
Below is a summary of everything we know about Tommy Robinson’s relations with Russia.
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“I might move to Russia”
As I reported at the time, Yaxley-Lennon went on a trip to Russia in early 2020, visiting Moscow and St Petersburg for a series of talks, meetings, and media appearances.
He even made a behind the scenes video, gushing about his jaunt.
The far-right leader, who cosplays as a British patriot, said that he prefers Moscow to London.
“I go to London and I don’t like London. I hate London,” he said. All I see is aggressiveness and attitude as a culture in a lot of the youngsters. I haven’t seen one single bit of that here.”
“Might move to Russia,” he added. (It’s a shame he has never enacted this promise).
“It’s clean. It’s beautiful,” he said, while standing in a Moscow skyscraper.
“The Red Square is beautiful… In fact, I’m gutted that my visa is just for a week. I want to come back with the wife.”
Importantly, it’s entirely unclear who paid for this trip. Throughout the video, Yaxley-Lennon merely refered to his patron as “the host”.
The video concluded with Robinson standing in front of the Kremlin, delivering a testimonial to Russia.
“The Russian people couldn’t have been any nicer. I feel welcomed, and to anyone else, I’d advise visiting here,” he said.
However, this wasn’t simply a holiday. According to the New York Times, Yaxley-Lennon used this trip to explore the possibility of moving his money to Russian bank accounts. The newspaper reported that he was acting on the advice of Paul Golding, leader of the far-right group Britain First.
The New York Times spoke to Edvard Chesnokov, Lennon’s chaperone on the trip, who, “confirmed that Robinson had discussed the possibility of opening bank accounts.”
Golding told the New York Times that he had spoken “extensively” with Robinson about his 2020 trip to Russia, but there was “no mention” of bank accounts. Robinson denied opening or discussing opening any bank accounts in Russia, or holding assets outside Britain.
Golding himself has visited Russia on a number of occasions in recent years, expressing his support for the country’s warmongering regime. In October 2019, Golding heaped praise on Putin, calling him a “strong leader”, and asserted that Russia is “far more democratic” than the West.
On one of his visits, Golding even took a bunch of pictures with a Vladimir Putin lookalike and claimed (possibly satirically; possibly not) that he had met the Russian president.
Like Golding, Robinson has also parroted Russia’s narratives, including on the Ukraine war.
As reported by the anti-fascist campaign group HOPE not hate, Yaxley-Lennon “has even gone as far as posting disinformation from the Russian state-owned outlet Sputnik News, claiming that Ukraine is purposely bombing its own civilians and blaming Russia.”
Robinson has frequently appeared on state-controlled media outlets. During his trip in early 2020, he used an interview on Russia Today to defend Putin ally Bashar al-Assad (who is currently in exile in Moscow having been overthrown as Syria’s president in December).
Yaxley-Lennon claimed that reports of Assad using chemical weapons were “total propaganda” designed to “get the [UK] public support to go to war.”
He also gave an interview to the Russian news website Vechernyaya Moskva, during which he denied Russian involvement in the 2018 Skripal murders in Salisbury, when former Russian military officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned by a deadly nerve agent.
“If Russia needed to remove him, they would do it quietly, without unnecessary noise, without the use of Russian chemical weapons. It was stupid,” Yaxley-Lennon said.
He even said he’d like to have a beer with Putin and that he’d use the meeting to urge the Russian president to give him a show on Russian television. And, during the period when Robinson was banned from every mainstream social media platform (bliss), his response was to join VK – a Russian social media service.
Now, Yaxley-Lennon uses Elon Musk’s platform to broadcast his brand of hate to millions of people – often repeating disinformation lines seemingly cooked up by the Kremlin.
Following far-right riots across Britain in the summer, former MI6 agent Christopher Steele suggested that Robinson and other “instigators” would be monitored for links to Russia. Steele noted that far-right actors had amplified false claims during the riots that had been manufactured by Russia-linked sites.
Of course Musk has his own questions to answer on Russia, given he has regularly held secretive talks with Putin since late 2022. Perhaps that is why he isn’t bothered about Robinson’s own pro-Putin proclivities.
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