He told The Front Page he recently met Zelenskyy in Munich where he asked the President why countries like New Zealand should care about the conflict there.
“Zelenskyy just broke in and said, ‘Yeah, you should be very happy you are so far away from Russia,’ and the room burst out laughing.
“But, then he turned to a more serious note [and said] the war is not really confined to Ukraine any more, the first other nation to join the war has been North Korea.
“And North Korea has been getting a lot of missiles and drones. And in modern warfare, these drones have ranges of thousands and thousands of kilometres.
“[He said] this can be used to affect the security of the Asia Pacific region, which is very relevant to New Zealand and Australia’s security interests.
“He then goes on to say there’s a possibility of a wider, regional conflagration with, he just said ‘other conflicts in the region’,” Mutch said.
Mutch said a representative of the Ukrainian Government had contacted him a while ago about New Zealand getting more involved in diplomacy.
“He said New Zealand has a reputation for being a peaceful country and that New Zealand’s contribution to peace talks would be encouraged.
“He wanted me to encourage New Zealand politicians to attend the Swiss peace conference that was held, without huge amounts of success, a couple of months ago,” he said.
Police Minister Mark Mitchell attended the Summit on Peace in Ukraine, held in Burgenstock, near Lucerne, in June 2024.
Meanwhile, United States President Donald Trump has inserted himself into the conflict. He’s initiating peace talks with Russia’s Vladamir Putin while calling Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy a ‘dictator’, saying he’s done a ‘terrible job’ and ‘could have made a deal earlier’.
Mutch said the irony is, this has made Zelenskyy ‘quite a lot more popular’.
“There’s nobody in Ukraine who’s calling Zelenskyy a dictator. There are certainly people who disagree with him politically. There are also military leaders who’ve criticised his strategic policies on the battlefield... But there’s no massive clamor in Ukraine for elections and rather, this is giving Zelenskyy a big boost of support in Ukraine.
“I think one poll showed his poll numbers had gone up by about 10% literally overnight since Trump made that comment.
“In some ways, it’s also made Ukrainians feel even more like they’re resisting a great enemy. They’re not just resisting Russia. They’re resisting both the pressure of Russia and the US at the same time,” he said.
Listen to the full episode to hear more about the conflict and where peace talks are at three years on.
The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5am. The podcast is presented by Chelsea Daniels, an Auckland-based journalist with a background in world news and crime/justice reporting who joined NZME in 2016.
You can follow the podcast at iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
