Putin’s Foreign Minister in NZ

It seems Putin’s Foreign Minister is also the NZ Foreign Minister. An extraordinary interview with Winston Peters in which he claims Russia is innocent of everything and compares them to Australia.

Is this the principled independent foreign policy that Labour and Greens boast of – being a toady to the Kremlin?

Newshub report:

Foreign Minister Winston Peters has defended efforts to get New Zealand a free trade deal with Russia, saying there’s “no evidence” it was involved in the shooting down of a passenger jet in 2014.

Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down over Ukraine, with 298 fatalities. A Dutch-led investigation determined a Russian-made missile fired from pro-Russian rebel territory was to blame.

“It was a former Russian missile, true – but who was responsible for setting it off?” Mr Peters asked Newshub Nation host Lisa Owen.

Well the Dutch investigation found the Buk missile system was transported from Russia on the day of the crash, fired from a rebel controlled area and returned to Russia after it was used to shoot down MH17.

And of course this is all related to the wider aggression by Russia against its neighbours.

Also worth noting that Russia vetoed a UN Security Council resolution to prosecute those responsible for shooting down the plane.

He also questioned widely accepted claims Russia meddled in the 2016 US presidential election.  

“We have a lot of allegations, but we do not have the facts laid out clearly,” said Mr Peters.

Winston could work for Putin with such lines. There has been a huge amount of factual evidence that Russia meddled. The Russia Embassy even had wire transfers that were marked with a subject line of 2016 election!

Just last month a US grand jury was persuaded there was enough evidence to indict 13 Russian nationals and 3 Russian entities with criminal offences in relation to the US elections.

“When you start talking about those moral judgements, you might not be trading with anybody very quickly. A lot of countries we deal with would not survive a serious human rights issue, or gender equality issue or an ethnic issue debate – but we still trade with them.”

Mr Peters said trading with Russia was comparable to trading with Australia, even though it’s deporting New Zealand-born criminals to a country many of them haven’t called home for decades.

“This is wrong, but we trade with Australia because we hope one day to vastly improve the circumstances.”

And now our foreign minister compares Russia to Australia! Bet that goes down well with the Aussies.

He is right that you still trade with countries that don’t have perfect human rights records. But that is not the issue with Russia. Russia is under global sanctions because it has invaded neighbouring countries. It is actively trying to destabilise Western countries elections such as France and the US.

Mr Peters also said New Zealand has “a chance” of being exempted from US President Donald Trump’s new tariffs on steel and aluminium.

He wasn’t aware if the Government has formally asked to be exempt yet, saying that was up to Finance Minister Grant Robertson.

Mr Trump’s move will see 25 percent tariffs on foreign steel and 10 percent on aluminium, as a protectionist measure to save Americans’ jobs.

But rather than oppose the move as detrimental to free trade, Mr Peters said Mr Trump was reacting to unfair deals.

And now Peters is defending the US imposing tariffs on New Zealand steel. Great to have a Foreign Minister who thinks his job is to defend Putin and Trump, rather than New Zealand.

Peters speaks officially on behalf of the New Zealand Government. I can’t wait for the House to resume and National MPs ask the Prime Minister if she stands by her comments of the Foreign Minister that there is no proof that Russia tried to meddle in the US election.