No foreign government was involved in this. Okay, so the guy had been conned into traveling to Russia in Christmas of 2020. That doesn't mean Russian SVR had recruited him.
If you want to see how SVR works then you need to watch Breaking Bad Wolf on Rumble. That was an actual true spy story where it's highly credible that U.S. citizen John Mark Dougan was in fact working for Russian intelligence. Last week he announced that he received a state award "order of merit for serving the fatherland". He even posted about this publicly and said that the medal was soaked in vodka and he had to drink the vodka at the ceremony and read a long speech in Russian. Originally, he planned to keep this a secret, but even now he won't say why he was given this award. Something to do with information warfare he said.
In comparison, the guy at the Linton base is a total ass. I met him once, before he was arrested. There's nothing clever or witty about this guy. He seemed pretty indifferent and aloof if you asked me. Nothing really impressed me or stood out about him.
Russia's foreign intelligence service, called the SVR, wouldn't bother to recruit an asshat like this guy, especially when he's already under surveillance right after the mosque shooting. Just think and use your brains people - the way that SVR works is that they need a secure line to connect with sources. They also do a lot of stuff electronically, so the fact that this guy at Linton was going to physically fly to Russia, supposedly to deliver military secrets, is just a huge red flag. SVR can use a secure channel from a burner laptop if they needed info.
Why would Russia even care about maps of New Zealand's pathetic little bases anyway? Russia has whatever you call it, geo-spatial intelligence. They have satellites and drones to take photos. They don't need a low ranking idiot to do the work for them. In intelligence work you never work with someone who you know is already compromised and under surveillance.
The whole thing about the espionage case is a fake. NZSIS set this guy up to take away his guns, ruin his career and put him in prison. The problem that I have is seeing the media make a false claim that this guy was handing intelligence to Russia, which obviously isn't the case. But if you go on Reddit they have swallowed this lie.
"Of course Putin is funding far-right groups in New Zealand, and of course Russia's foreign intelligence service is directing Action Zealandia members in 2019-2020".
I'm sorry but this is delusional. SVR does not work with dropkicks who're under 24 hour surveillance and I call on people to use basic reasoning to conclude that there's no espionage here. The information was merely handed over to a police informant who was somehow pretending to pose as a Russian spy, despite not being Russian. And no doubt the police operation was handled by NZSIS. The New Zealand Police usually don't pretend to by Russian spies.
Imagine how effing stupid you'd have to be, to think that Russian intelligence was having in-person meetings with nazis to uncover minor details about some shitty backwater military "camp". It isn't even an "installation" just a god damned "camp". You could probably go on Google Earth and find aerial photographs. It's not like it's a secret.
Or maybe I'm the one who's an idiot, and Russia was going to use the mould from our damp barracks in Linton to manufacture a bio-weapon. I wish that Russia really was infiltrating NZ bases with some huge nefarious plot but the evidence suggests an NZSIS sting operation. If that's too hard to folks to believe then I'll just say it's a police sting operation. People have no clue how intelligence agencies work or don't work but you can learn if you read books about the Anna Chapman case, for example.