A heated exchange erupted on GB News when host Patrick Christys interrupted journalist Benjamin Butterworth during a passionate debate about Ukraine and the ongoing Russia conflict. The clash started when Christys criticized European leaders, accusing them of remaining silent on issues like mass sexual assaults in Cologne and grooming gangs in the UK while now demanding unwavering support for Ukraine.
“Can you understand why people feel quite annoyed when they see certain European elites now talking about how we must defend Europe at all costs when actually a lot of people frankly think they’ve made decisions that have made our lives worse, less safe, and damaged our culture for the last couple of decades?” Christys asked, challenging the perceived hypocrisy of some European leaders, reported by the Express.
Butterworth immediately pushed back, accusing Christys of promoting ideas that echoed Russian propaganda. “I think your monologue did an impressive job of being translated from its original Russian,” he retorted. “Frankly, it is people in Russia that want to have that divide and rule tactics, that want culture war issues… to divide us so that we are distracted from what they are doing.”
Christys quickly rejected the suggestion that he was parroting Russian views. “I don’t want to see Putin win. What he did was wrong… If Vladimir Putin invaded Carlisle, I wouldn’t want him to have an inch of that ground,” he fired back, stressing his opposition to Russian aggression. He pressed Butterworth further on what he saw as hypocrisy among European leaders regarding their past policies.
However, Butterworth did not relent, directing his criticism at Reform UK’s Richard Tice. Tice has faced backlash for suggesting that Ukraine should consider ceding territory to Russia as part of peace negotiations. “We’ve been subjected in the past few days to Trump bootlickers from Reform, people like Richard Tice going around saying that Ukraine should give up some of its lands,” Butterworth fumed. “We didn’t do that as Britain. They didn’t do that in the Falklands. How can it be that right-wing parties, that so often talk about sovereignty and borders, are saying that a modern European country should have its borders compromised for a demagogue?”
He continued, “This is the Chamberlain attitude, and we should be terrified of anyone making excuses for it!” The exchange comes amid ongoing controversy surrounding Tice’s controversial stance on Ukraine. In a separate interview on TalkTV, Julia Hartley-Brewer criticized Tice for his position, stating, “Wars stop when one side is defeated, not through negotiations,” and accusing him of advocating for “giving Putin everything he wants.”
