![\"Diane](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/https:\/\/media.zenfs.com\/en\/huffpost_uk_744\/f410b802aa7cf702a52dee21eabba589.jpg\"\/)
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Diane Abbott only got the Labour whip back in July. via Associated Press<\/p>\n
Diane Abbott <\/a>has been dubbed\u00a0“Putin’s useful idiot” after she downplayed the threat posed to the West by Russia.<\/p>\n The veteran Labour <\/a>MP said it was\u00a0“a Nato<\/a> fiction” being used to justify a boost in defence spending, which she opposes.<\/p>\n Her comments come just a month after it emerged she had previously described<\/a> the war in Ukraine<\/a> as\u00a0“a Nato campaign against Russia”.<\/p>\n Andy Burnham<\/a> has insisted that the UK will hit Nato’s target of spending 3.5% of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) on defence by 2035.<\/p>\n In a post on X, Abbott said:\u00a0“The imminent threat from Russia is a Nato fiction to justify their complete capitulation to Trump’s demands for more military spending. The increase should not go ahead.”<\/p>\n Her comments sparked an angry backlash from politicians and pro-Ukraine campaigners.<\/p>\n A spokesman for Tory leader Kemi Badenoch<\/a> said: “Those views are reprehensible. Ukraine is an innocent party in this. Everyone should be foursquare behind Ukraine and against Russian aggression.”<\/p>\n Posting on X, Tory MP Ben Obese-Jecty said Abbott was\u00a0“playing the role of Putin’s useful idiot”.<\/p>\n “To rail against increased defence spending by claiming the threat Russia pose is ‘a Nato fiction’ shows she is dangerously out of touch,” he said.<\/p>\n “Over four years into the war in Ukraine, and with escalating sub-threshold activity, we are agreed that increasing defence spending is a matter of national security. It beggars belief that a senior Labour politician could be so na\u00efve.”<\/p>\n The Ukraine Solidarity Campaign said:\u00a0“There are legitimate debates to be had about defence spending.<\/p>\n “Denying the Russian regime is a threat to democracy all over the world is not legitimate, particularly when the speaker describes Russia’s war on Ukraine as ‘the Nato campaign against Russia’.”<\/p>\n Abbott, the longest serving female MP in the Commons, lost the Labour whip last year after she argued in a letter to The Observer in 2023 that Jewish, Irish and Traveller communities\u00a0experience prejudice rather than racism.<\/a><\/p>\n She got the whip back<\/a> after Burnham replaced Keir Starmer as prime minister in July.<\/p>\n