I see the New Zealand Foreign Minister, Winston Peters announced, while on a visit to Turkey, that this country was extending its commitment of personnel and money to continue the training of Ukrainian military personnel in the UK and across Europe. 

Up to 100 NZDF instructors are training Ukrainian Armed Forces personnel, apparently teaching vital skills such as combat casualty care, operational law, and weapons handling. The training deployment and related intelligence/logistics support will continue through December 2026 and the extension brings New Zealand’s total financial and in-kind assistance to Ukraine to $152 million.

Hang on a minute….. so we commit 100 of our defence force personnel to train Ukrainian military personnel to kill other young soldiers on the battlefield, presumably in the Eastern Ukraine regions.

So we are not neutral any more regarding disputes such as that waging for over 4 years now in Ukraine? Our successive Governments have decided that NATO is morally right to arm and support Ukrainians as they kill hundreds of thousands of young Russians, as well as many of them getting killed themselves. By training and financing one side, it doesn’t really look like we are doing anything to settle this, stop the slaughter or talk some sense amid all the carnage. All it seems to me is that we are standing on one side and throwing a few cans of petrol in the general direction of the fire and hoping it will put itself out.

New Zealand always had a reputation of positively supporting humanitarian causes across the world and actively working to support peaceful initiatives. Seems like that has all changed now and we have decided who is right and who is wrong in this horrible conflict. Despite that fact that politicians in this country have little knowledge of the historical and political issues that ignited and supported this war, they are happy enough to believe the streams of heavily biased and ill conceived rubbish that media outlets and well paid European bureaucrats are telling them.

I am not saying who is right and who is wrong in this conflict, but what I do know is that nothing like this is black and white, there are no goodies and baddies, there are no glorious victories and all that is happening is that young people are dying by their tens of thousands in that mess.

Shame on the New Zealand Government and its representatives for boasting of this ‘contribution’ to a hell hole. Shame on you all for failing to promote peace instead of war and using $152 million from our coffers to do this while people in this country live on the streets and children go hungry by their droves.