Security Bureau

• The crime is a particularly grave one under the Russian Criminal Code, punishable by imprisonment ranging from 12 to 20 years.
• Russia has long lost its status as a state governed by the rule of law.
• It also runs counter to the experience of others in Russia who have been imprisoned for many years for expressing anti-war sentiment in public.

Undermining Putinism

• Indeed, Putin at first tried to use the weight of the Russian legal system to pressure the Wagner Group to abandon its march on Moscow.
• Rather than negotiate, Putin would pursue a policy of destroying those attacking the Russian state – even at the heavy cost of hostages’ lives.
• That image of a man who will not negotiate has now been shattered.

‘Erosion of the legal system’

• But the damage goes beyond denting Putin’s reputation – it also undermines Russia’s legal system itself.
• In terms of Russian law, the Federal Security Bureau has presented nothing in the way of sound legal justification for dropping the criminal case against Prigozhin or the Wagner Group.
• That the Russian authorities have so far failed to come up with any legal justification for dropping the case marks a departure from past precedent.
• The state is prohibited from funding mercenary activities – something that raises legal questions over the financing of Prigozhin’s private army in Ukraine in the first place.

Laws not written in stone

• In the opening days of the February 2022 invasion, it became a criminal offense in Russia to spread “false information” or “discredit” the Russian army.
• The vaguely worded law has made possible the large-scale political persecution of Russian citizens with anti-war views.
• I fear it will give Russian authorities even more discretion and will entail a new round of repression inside the country.

• The Chinese leader said he placed “great importance” on the relationship with New Zealand.
• Both businesslike, Hipkins made sure to stress his country was open for business too.
• There might even be scope for cooperation over China’s position on a political settlement of the war in Ukraine.

Claim and counter-claim

• So New Zealand walks a fine line with China, and beneath the diplomatic niceties there is a growing fault line.
• Mahuta has said the conversation was merely “robust”, but there’s no denying China’s combativeness over criticism or threat.
• More recently, China blocked Lithuanian exports after the tiny nation allowed Taiwan to establish a de-facto embassy there.

Security and circumspection

• In 2018, New Zealand’s Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) stated it had “established links” between the Chinese Ministry of State Security and a global campaign of commercial intellectual property theft.
• New Zealand’s Security Intelligence Service (SIS) has also recently noted agents from a “small number of foreign states” were becoming “increasingly aggressive”, but chose not to identify the culprits.
• Read more:
  Approach with caution: why NZ should be wary of buying into the AUKUS security pact

NATO and AUKUS

• How long the diplomatic tightrope can be walked is an open question, given the prime minister’s forthcoming attendance at the NATO summit in Lithuania in July, and the pending decision on AUKUS.
• And while it’s never explicit, AUKUS is a response to the perceived threat of China’s increasing assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific region.
• Despite its own rapid militarisation, the Chinese government has condemned AUKUS as reflecting a “Cold War mentality” that involves a “path of error and danger”.

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• He argues that Trump's arbitrariness, and arrogance will have inevitably led the United States into decline.
• He believes that as president, Trump even became friends with rogue countries, emboldening bad behavior from other nations.
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