PM Jacinda Ardern took questions after the Polish government's announcement that a pair of stray Russian missiles struck the country.
Video / Claire Trevett
Opinion by Claire Trevett
Claire Trevett is the New Zealand Herald’s Political Editor, based at Parliament in Wellington.
News that a missile had hit on the Poland side of the border with Ukraine broke just as Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was preparing for a day in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam.
She will now head to Bangkok to attend Apec, leaving behind a stay in Vietnamin which she was presented with multiple large bunches of flowers and taken on a ramble through the President Palace orchard to pick a pomelo with Vietnam’s Prime Minister. That ramble produced a photo op that was remarkably Garden of Eden-esque.
It will be far from the Garden of Eden at Apec.
The last time Ardern was in Vietnam was for her very first Apec summit in 2017 - a newly elected Prime Minister at her first big summit.
On that occasion, Indonesia’s President serenaded Russia’s President Vladimir Putin on his guitar, singing Happy Birthday as Putin grinned and leaders clapped.
This time around there will be no singing. Putin won’t even be there, leaving it to Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
Asked if she expected the Russia situation to dominate at Apec, Ardern stated the obvious: yes. It dominated at the East Asia Summit and the G20 Summit and in every other international meeting.
That will be the case regardless of whether that missile was from Russian or Ukraine forces, and whether it was an accident or otherwise.
Apec is predominantly an economic summit, rather than a political one.
But at such times - and with many leaders coming straight from the G20 Summit in Indonesia - politics is inevitable.
The war will dominate at an economic level just as much: at the earlier EAS, many leaders voiced their concerns about the impact it has had on global supply lines and food and energy crises.
Nobody can escape Putin’s war, including New Zealand.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern meets US President Donald Trump in New York in 2019. Photo / supplied
The other breaking news ahead of Apec was former US President Donald Trump’s announcement that he intends to try to run for the White House again.
That 2017 Apec had also been Trump’s first Apec, and he and Ardern had met for the first time.
Trump apparently mistook her for Canadian PM Justin Trudeau’s wife.
It was an awkward start to an awkward relationship that pretty much didn’t exist. Ardern made no White House visits, there was precious little interaction and Ardern was dubbed the “anti-Trump” by media, the polar opposite of him politically.
In some ways the 2022 Apec - the first in-person conference since 2018 - will be more pleasant for Ardern. She has firmer political friends in US Vice President Kamala Harris and Australia’s Anthony Albanese.
That 2017 summit might have felt tough at the time. The same countries were causing nervousness - but they have now escalated.
China has slipped down the scale thanks to Russia - but the nervousness about the US-China relationship and contest in the region is greater.
There will be another change from 2017. Back then, Ardern was a rarity as a woman leader in Apec. But she at least had some company in Myanmar’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Ardern sat next to her at most events.
This time round, Suu Kyi is under house arrest after the military coup in 2021 - and Myanmar’s military junta is another item on Apec’s plate of troubles.
