New Zealand fires top diplomats in London to ask about Trump’s grasp of history during Ukraine’s chat

Sydney – Foreign Minister said on Thursday that New Zealand fired top diplomats in London after asking President Trump for his “deeply disappointing” remarks. British High Commissioner Phil Goff questioned whether the U.S. president “really understands history” in panel discussion Russia invades Ukraine.

A spokesman for New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters said: “They do not represent the views of the New Zealand government and put him in his position as London’s High Commissioner, and the comments were “very disappointing”.

Peters later said that if he commented the same to any other world leader, he would fire Goff.

Peters told reporters: “It’s a pity.”

Former Foreign Minister Goff compared the recent Ukrainian peace efforts to the 1938 Munich Agreement, an agreement between European powers that allowed Nazi Germany to annex parts of Czechoslovakia. Later, the policy would be considered as a soothing of a determined aggressor and considered a serious failure of foreign policy that led to World War II.

Some expressed concern that Mr. Trump would push Ukraine to accept the peace agreement in which Russia was allowed to insist on occupying the territory.

“In 1938, I reread the speech of the House of Commons in 1938,” Goff said at Chatham House in London. “He turned to (the then Prime Minister Neville) Chamberlain, saying, ‘You have a choice between war and shame. You choose shame, but you have war.”

“President Trump restored Churchill’s bust to the Oval Office, but do you think he really knows history?” Goff asked.

After a huge breakdown of the relationship between Kiev and the White House, the United States and Ukraine “suspended” intelligence sharing.

Mr. Trump and Ukraine’s leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy stood out in the Oval Office last week, after which the United States suspended military aid that was crucial to Ukraine.