(AFP) – New Zealand will sack its top diplomat in London after he made a “deeply disappointing” remark questioning Donald Trump’s grasp of history, the foreign minister said Thursday. High Commissioner to the United Kingdom Phil Goff questioned whether the US president “really understands history” during a panel discussion about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The comments were “deeply disappointing,” said a spokesman for New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters. “They do not represent the views of the NZ government and make his position as High Commissioner to London untenable.” Goff compared recent Ukraine peace efforts with the 1938 Munich Agreement — a pact between European powers that allowed Nazi Germany to annex parts of Czechoslovakia. Some fear Trump could push Ukraine to accept a peace deal in which Russia holds on to large swaths of captured territory.
“I was re-reading Churchill’s speech to the House of Commons in 1938 after the Munich agreement,” Goff said at London’s Chatham House this week, referencing the famed wartime leader. “He turned to (then Prime Minister Neville) Chamberlain and said: ‘You had the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour yet you will have war.'”
“President Trump has restored the bust of Churchill to the Oval Office, but do you think he really understands history?” Goff said. The United States has “paused” intelligence sharing with Ukraine after a dramatic breakdown in relations between Kyiv and the White House. Trump and Ukraine’s leader Volodymyr Zelensky had a public falling out in the Oval Office last week, followed by the United States suspending crucial military aid to Ukraine.
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