Nicola Sturgeon has condemned her predecessor Alex Salmond’s decision to host a chat show on a Kremlin propaganda channel after he was described by opponents as “Putin’s puppet”.

She said she had not been asked about the deal but that if she had been she would have advised against his appearance on the RT channel, formerly known as Russia Today.

Her comments open up a rare public rift between the current and former first minister and echo open criticism from other senior Nationalists.

The Alex Salmond Show is to air on a Thursday, starting next week, and will be a mixture of discussion about current affairs and “friendly exploration” into his guests’ personalities.

Mr Salmond has previously attracted criticism for appearing on the channel, which has been described as a key part of Russia’s state-funded disinformation campaign. He used the channel in 2015 to attack the BBC as a “mouthpiece of Tory propaganda.”