Russian security services arrested<\/a> a 55-year-old man accused of spying for New Zealand. The man, who has not been named, is being held in pre-trial detention on treason charges and could face life in prison. <\/p>\nHe was arrested in Khabarovsk in Russia’s south-east, with video shot by the FSB and shown by local media showing the man’s arrest and his home being searched.<\/p>\n
Ambassador Stanislav Krans spoke to Q+A earlier this week, addressing a statement by Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) that accused a Russian citizen of passing information to a foreign intelligence service for money.<\/p>\n
“He is just under custody,” Krans said. <\/p>\n
“If it is proved that he is guilty, so it will be the judgement of the court, not by FSB or any of the structures in my country.”<\/p>\n
The Russian FSB said the man is a Russian citizen and proactively established contact with the NZ Security Intelligence Service.\u00a0 (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n
He added: “We don’t call New Zealanders as enemies, and we are not focusing on making our relations worse. We have already reached our historical low in our relations.<\/p>\n
“But we don’t want to make it worse. At the same time, so of course we are just talking about some case that actually it’s a small case. It’s not any big deal.”<\/p>\n
The FSB named New Zealand’s SIS. Krans declined to confirm or deny the agency’s involvement but did not hold back on the man at the centre of the case.<\/p>\n
“We don’t like that one of our citizens became a traitor,” Krans said. <\/p>\n
“It should be investigation first completed, and after that, so we get a much clearer picture of what is happening, and who is behind it.”<\/p>\n
The ambassador said the embassy had no direct knowledge of the investigation.<\/p>\n
Krans said he had been disappointed by the local reaction in New Zealand, criticising commentators who had questioned the reliability of Russian accounts.<\/p>\n
The Russian Federal Service said he is a Russian citizen and proactively established contact with representatives of the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service. (Source: Other)<\/p>\n
“I think that every New Zealander should be proud that their intelligence service is working somewhere efficiently, not wasting taxpayers’ money,” he suggested.<\/p>\n
He quickly cast the remark as hypothetical rather than an admission, saying it should not be taken as confirmation the SIS was involved. <\/p>\n
Any question of guilt, he earlier added, would be settled by Russia’s courts.<\/p>\n
Asked directly whether Russian spies operate in New Zealand – after the SIS named Russia as one of three state actors involved in foreign interference here – Krans said the country was simply not a Russian priority.<\/p>\n
“New Zealand is not in the focus of my country,” he said, listing spying, trade and political communication among the areas where that was the case.<\/p>\n
For the full interview, watch the video above<\/p>\n
Q+A with Jack Tame is made with the support of New Zealand On Air<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Russia’s ambassador to New Zealand has dismissed the espionage allegations at the centre of a diplomatic flashpoint as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":556099,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69,135,1745],"class_list":["post-556098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-politics","tag-uk-europe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556098","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=556098"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556098\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/556099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=556098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=556098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=556098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}