Dame Jacinda Ardern that there were no spies in the country<\/a>.<\/p>\nAt the time, security analyst Paul Buchanan said Ardern\u2019s statement about Russian spies threatened to make \u201cNew Zealand a laughing stock\u201d. The remarks were made in the context of Russia\u2019s likely culpability in the poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia Skripal in Britain. <\/p>\n
Ardern\u2019s Foreign Minister, Winston Peters, later said there was Russian \u201cintelligence activity\u201d in New Zealand but no one fitted the definition of a spy, which would be used to expel them. <\/p>\n
Krans described Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine as an \u201cinternal\u201d matter. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe do not interfere in your internal affairs. That is your own decision what to do within your state,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhatever is your assessment of what is in this conflict, our position has nothing to do with New Zealand.<\/p>\n
\u201cBoth sides have to sit together to talk together to restore political dialogue.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the International Court of Justice did not accept jurisdiction on the question of the war\u2019s legality, a Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine was established by the Council of Europe to prosecute the question. <\/p>\n
![\"The]()
The dining room at the Russian Embassy, which has not hosted New Zealand politicians for some time. Photo \/ Thomas Coughlan<\/p>\n
The International Criminal Court has arrest warrants out for President Vladimir Putin and Children\u2019s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova. Former Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and senior general Valery Gerasimov also have warrants out. <\/p>\n
The warrants mention a number of alleged war crimes; in Putin and Lvova-Belova\u2019s case the warrants relate to the alleged unlawful deportation and transfer of Ukrainian children. Shoigu and Gerasimov\u2019s warrants related to the alleged directing of attacks at civilian objects and the war crime of causing excessive incidental harm to civilians or damage to civilian objects.<\/p>\n
Krans took his time to answer questions on war crimes, pausing at points to correct himself. <\/p>\n
\u201cWar crimes… it means… when you are saying about any local conflicts. Many countries start wars, start military operations, start some actions against other actions and everyone stays silent and tries not to be involved other than in a diplomatic way, not talking about courts, tribunals and so forth.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn respect of Russia, we consider this kind of instrument also cannot be applied because there is no war crime… during the military conflict we understand it is very difficult to avoid any casualties,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no war crime there,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Krans said that when Russia alleges war crimes against Ukraine \u201cnobody believes us\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said Russia has \u201ca lot of instruments that could punish the violator of rules\u201d, such as the \u201cmilitary police and the courts\u201d. <\/p>\n
The World Justice Project gives Russia a rule of law score of 43, suggesting scepticism the rule of law operates properly in the country. A higher score means better adherence to the principles of the rule of law. New Zealand\u2019s score is 83.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cAnd after that New Zealanders invented the cake,\u201d Krans said, potentially giving up any hope of resetting relations…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":466558,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[45343,6129,71,8596,117,111,43,139,69,236226,520,103127,8221,20701,5258,61,14638,6149,80],"class_list":["post-466557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-ambassador","tag-crimes","tag-from","tag-keen","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-pavlova","tag-relationship","tag-reset","tag-russian","tag-russias","tag-shift","tag-to","tag-wants","tag-war","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=466557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466557\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/466558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=466557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=466557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=466557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}