Officials are taking a progressive approach to identifying oligarchs and others helping the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the foreign minister says.
Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
Negotiations across the globe have gone into overdrive as world leaders scramble for a solution to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
A law enabling New Zealand to freeze the assets of those associated with Russia, in response to its invasion of Ukraine, will pass under urgency this week.
The new Russia Sanctions Bill would be able to target those associated with the invasion, including people, services, companies and assets.
The government has also published a travel ban list of more than 100 people.
Minister of Foreign Affairs Nanaia Mahuta told Morning Report part of the process would involve sharing information with other countries who had identified people, and intelligence gathering.
"Be assured that over time, the progressive approach to identifying individuals who have critical connections to the actions of the current regime in Russia - who is undertaking war in Ukraine - will be dealt with and addressed through the sanctions process."
The first tranche of sanctions would impact oligarchs who were clearly identified and known around the world, she said.
As intelligence was gathered around the nature of the connections, others would be considered, she said.
"The bill provides for the threshold to which the government can consider individuals - oligarchs - and then put them on the list."
Mahuta said the range of economic and other sanctions placed on Russia across the world would act as "a wall of resistance" and send a message to Russia that the war was wrong.
Before war broke out, Mahuta had called in the ambassador to express the government's significant concern at the deepening impact of the potential for war.
The way sanctions were being used around the world was new, she said.
"I would hope that diplomacy would work in the future, nobody wants war."
The National Party was preparing to support the government to urgently pass the law.
National Party foreign affairs spokesperson Gerry Brownlee said he would make the recommendation to caucus.
"It is necessary, no one would have foreseen the extraordinary behaviour of Russia but it is something that you need in circumstances like this."
It was important New Zealand stood beside other countries in condemning Russia.
But Brownlee hoped the government would bring in a more comprehensive bill later in the year that would allow greater flexibility in other conflicts.
The decision to take the draft autonomous sanction bill off the order paper was the wrong decision, he said.
National Party deputy leader Nicola Willis this morning said the party would be scrutinising the proposals carefully.
"We have had one arm tied behind our back because we have been forced to work within the UN system that Russia has had a veto in. This is a problem that National proactively highlighted last year, it's why we put forward a legislative fix. The government has rejected that on two occassions, we are where we are now."
She said it was the right thing for the government to continue work on a broader autonomous sanctions regime, but it was a shame it had taken so long.
ACT's foreign affairs spokesperson Brooke van Velden says the party would support the legislation but the government had been far too slow to act.
"We have been weak as a liberal democracy standing up in the international community to respond to Russia's actions, we should have had something like this in place weeks ago," she said.
She said while ACT was generally opposed to Parliament using urgency - in this case it was urgent, and it was warranted.
The Green Party wanted to ensure any legislation for autonomous sanctions against Russia didn't set a precedent for politically motivated sanctions in the future.
Green's foreign affairs spokesperson Golriz Ghahraman says any sanctions regime still needed to uphold international and human rights law.
"Setting a standard that says if you do breach those things we can take action, but it is not going to be about politicisation or commercial interests, which it could be so we are really concerned about that," she said.
Ghahraman said the Greens didn't want a repeat of the politically motivated sanctions as seen during the war on terror by the UK and US.
She also wanted to make sure that basic supplies, such as PPE and medical supplies weren't caught up in the sanctions.
She had raised those concerns with the minister.
Russia has changed the game - expert
Massey University director of the centre for defence and security studies, professor Rouben Azizian, told Morning Report the sanctions were "certainly radically new".
Russia had changed the game, he said.
"It's Putin's aggression that required us to rethink what to do because no one in their right mind imagined that he would do this and it will I think likely prove to be a disaster for Russia."
He said the world was scrambling to find a reaction.
The harder the world reacted to Russia, the more panic in the market and the higher the oil and gas prices would go, he said.
"It's driven by the uncertainty created by Russia and then Russia benefits from it so last week on a single day Russia earned more than $700 million for Europe alone in gas payments.
"So there's a real tension here and it's obvious I think that we need to start talking about what to do but as soon as you do you trigger this huge movement in prices which will effect everyone in the world economy ... it's a very delicate balance."
New Zealand on Russia's list of 'unfriendly' nations
Russia has released a list of countries which have imposed or joined sanctions against Moscow, the state news agency Tass reports.
The list includes New Zealand, Australia, the US, Canada, EU states, the UK, Japan, and Singapore.
According to a Russian government decree, the state and its citizens and companies will be able to pay foreign currency debts to creditors from the list of unfriendly countries in rubles, Tass said.
