John Daniel

Yeah, this is going to feel like a bit of a walk, but stick with us.

It's important because Armenia, formerly part of the Soviet Union, has been on the wrong end of some brutal geopolitical calculations, and it continues to be the victim of realpolitik, even from our own government here in New Zealand.

While the US and Russia and Europe and dozens of other countries call this a genocide, Turkey denies it, pushing back very strongly against the word.

The Turks say the death toll is exaggerated and that people die because of things like disease or bad weather and perhaps a few bad apples in far-flung outposts of a ramshackle administration.

Yeah, and look, either way, you make these calls based on national interest.

So you can't say that's wrong.

No, just that foreign affairs often involves murky trade-offs and moral compromise.

Historically, our geographical isolation has kept us relatively safe from invasion.

But the reality is that small countries need alliances, and those alliances aren't necessarily going to be perfect.

And let's face it, no one, including us, will always be on the right side of history.

So the Armenians have left behind Russia to realign with their former oppressors.

Here in New Zealand, so far from these conflict zones, it can be hard to grasp the reality that other countries live with.

It's important to understand what makes people tick, whether you're working with them or against them.

That's right, I was only 13, but it was actually a kind of genuine question.

Do they love their children?

Because from a distance, we perceived them as being incredibly hard-hearted, stony-faced brutes, intent on destroying us and our freedom.

So it was kind of hard to picture them as having much time for kids.

But of course they loved their children, if anything.

In a society that often lacked material comforts and that was so tightly controlled it would have been hard to know who to trust, children must have been a straightforward joy.

Even though Vladimir has asked Kid Bennett's to procure some quite sensitive information and technology, it's always going to be a possibility that something unexpected, like an approach on how to get to New Zealand, could happen, because they're so close now.