“Dr Paul G. Buchanan is a former policy analyst and intelligence consultant to US government security agencies who specializes in matters of security, comparative and international politics.”

‘Russia is clearly a threat to democracies around the world, but so are a number of right-wing political movements, think tanks and networks. In fact, the latter may be more insidious because they use covers such as free speech rights to cloak their reprehensible and anti-democratic views and work to mainstream these views via recognised political parties. And, because they are homegrown and their foreign connections are not transparent, they may seem legitimate grassroots organisations to the naive or uninformed. Russia is ruled by a nasty authoritarian regime that engages in state terrorism against its own people as well as foreigners. But so are many other authoritarian regimes (say, Saudi Arabia and other oil-oligarchic states in the Gulf region, the PRC, North Korea or Iran. The burden of diplomacy is to maintain relations with such regimes even if their actions are despicable (some would include Israel on that list). So I disagree that expelling the ambassador is a good thing even if the symbolism is apparent. Instead, what I believe needs to happen is for NZ to adopt a range of punitive measures such as freezes on Russian assets in NZ, sanctions on Russian individuals with ties to NZ, denial or withdrawal of visas for Russians such as those working on NZ fishing vessels (to say nothing of billionaires with properties in NZ), and much more. I believe that some of that has happened already but it is not enough. To my mind such measures will drive the point home far more effectively than expelling the ambassador. In fact, some time ago I suggested publicly that if anyone in the Russian embassy should be expelled it should be its military attachés, who also serve as official cover intelligence agents. That serves to drive home the point that NZ can tell the difference between diplomats and people who are directly associated with, and in fact are members of, the Russian armed forces. In any case, good on you and your colleagues for calling attention to Russia's anti-democratic activities in NZ and elsewhere, which as I am sure you well know includes cyber-warfare and disinformation campaigns orchestrated but the likes of the GRU Fancy Bear cyber-hacking unit. They are keeping the GCSB cyber-defence unit busy.’