Reform UK’s candidate for the upcoming Makerfield by-election said that Russia was “within their rights” to invade Crimea, comparing it with the UK’s sovereignty claim over the Falkland Islands.
In the latest unearthed social media comment made by Robert Kenyon, who is taking on Labour’s Andy Burnham in the Greater Manchester constituency on 18 June, the Reform candidate agreed with a post which described Moscow’s annexation of the peninsula in March 2014 as “democracy in action”, The Telegraph reports.
In an online forum in March 2014, Mr Kenyon engaged with a post titled “Hypocrisy of the West regarding Ukraine in the sin bin”, where a member wrote: “The people of the Crimea want to be in Russia, for me that is democracy in action.
“The Government should work for the people not the other way round. The people have spoken and they have what they want. The Falklands and Gibraltar, they want to stay British, so be it.”
According to The Telegraph, Mr Kenyon responded to the post, saying: “I agree totally, Russia are well within their rights to do what they have done as we did with the Falklands. However, will Latvia be next?”
Moscow’s illegal annexation of Crimea on 18 March 2014 was only recognised internationally by countries such as North Korea and Sudan.
By the time Russia annexed it, Crimea had been a part of Ukraine for 60 years.
Russia’s relations with the West plummeted to new lows following the annexation, with the United States, the European Union and other countries imposed sanctions on Moscow and its officials.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has vowed to retake it and said that Russia “won’t be able to steal” the peninsula.
A Reform UK spokesman told The Independent: “At no point did Rob explicitly support or endorse Russia’s actions in Crimea.
“He is fully opposed to Russia’s illegal and brutal invasion of Ukraine.
“We fully back Cllr Kenyon. He is an excellent, local candidate who we are confident will be a superb MP for Makerfield.”
Mr Kenyon has also been accused of making “degrading” comments about women in another series of resurfaced online posts.
An account linked to him wrote that women can’t “ref, drive or give directions” and declared: “I’m sexist, sorry but I am.”
Posts made on an online rugby fan forum in the 2010s objectified European women’s bodies while saying English women “don’t care” and “just walk around with their fat bellies and odd shapes pushing a pram at 16 in their PJ’s”.
The user also said in an RLFans forum: “European women…all have really good figures and are good looking”, and responded to a post with links to images of women, saying: “Wouldn’t get me off any of those with a bazooka.”
In 2019, responding to a discussion over women presenting matches on Sky, they wrote: “The women on the panel’s aren’t up to the job and only there to tick a box” and said women’s super league players are “no where near the standard” to be commentating on games.
The remarks were made by an account under the username “post”, which says in other comments that their Twitter handle is @robkenyon1 and promotes Mr Kenyon’s book, The Blood Waltz.
In a now-deleted post on X in 2019, the user also suggested he would “rank higher” than a female presenter and former player because he had “won the Champions League with Accrington Stanley on FIFA Career Mode”.
A spokesperson for Reform UK did not dispute those resurfaced comments but instead dismissed them as “locker room banter”.
The comments came days after other offensive X posts were highlighted by campaign group Hope Not Hate. Re-surfaced social media posts connected to Mr Kenyon have also seen him accused of sharing transphobic slurs and Covid misinformation.
In one deleted post on X, @robkenyon1 shared a sexually explicit post sent to Carol Vorderman on her birthday, in which another user declared he wanted to perform a sexual act on the presenter, adding: “He’s only saying what we’re all thinking.”
Mr Kenyon, who was born in the constituency and now works as a self-employed plumber, ran in the 2024 general election where he finished in second place in the seat with 31.8 per cent of the vote.
