Foreign Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta refused to confirm whether one of the country's richest Russian investors will face sanctions as protest boats arrived at the billionaire's luxury retreat in Northland.
Speaking to Q+A with Jack Tame, the Foreign Affairs Minister said oligarchs with close ties to the "Putin regime" would be targeted, but that she wasn't ready to comment on who qualified.
"There will be ways to assess individuals and whether they meet the threshold to be able to go on the sanctions list," she said.
"It is difficult for me to talk about individuals prior to undertaking those threshold tests, and… we have the capacity to do that now that the law is in place."
Mahuta made the comments while a Greenpeace-led "peace flotilla" of at least seven boats made their way towards a luxury retreat in Northland owned by Alexander Abramov.
Abramov is one of the country's wealthiest Russian investors and has used the $50 million estate at Helena Bay on Northland's east coast.
Mahuta said there was a legislative process in place as a result of the passing of the Russia Sanctions Bill.
"We need the intelligence to be able to justify people being on the sanctions list, and they have to be connected to the Putin regime and the military action currently being undertaken," she said.
"The intention in the first instance is, like every other country, that we start looking at Russian oligarchs because we know there is often a very strong connection with the Putin regime."
She said she couldn't comment on sanctions for individuals until that process had been undertaken.
In a statement, Greenpeace said its flotilla protesters were calling for a freezing of local assets owned by Russian oligarchs including Abramov.
"There is a real threat of nuclear war and powerful Russian oligarchs like Alexander Abramov have substantial assets right here in Aotearoa," the statement read.
The organisation was calling on the Government to freeze the assets of Russian oligarchs to put pressure on Putin in order to end the conflict in Ukraine.
Mahuta said: "The difficulty with making an arbitrary statement about whether or not people should be on [the list], is that we might inadvertently target any Russian person just because they are Russian, and that is not the intention of this legislation."
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