King Charles III receives Prime Minister Chris Hipkins during an audience at Buckingham Palace, London, 3 May 2023. Photo: PA Wire / Stefan Rousseau
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has described his meeting with King Charles at Buckingham Palace overnight as "quite an amazing moment."
Hipkins, who is in the United Kingdom to attend Saturday's coronation, was gifted a warm tray of sausage rolls by the King at the end of their face-to-face.
"I was incredibly touched by the gesture, as you will see from the fact that there's only two left. They were exceptionally good," Hipkins said after the meeting.
The pair had "some really good conversations about a range of issues affecting New Zealand," Hipkins said.
"The King has been closely following the recovery from the flooding and the cyclone and so he wanted to talk about that. Then that led into a broader conversation about climate change."
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Hipkins described meeting the monarch as an "amazing moment."
"I remember, and I relayed this to him ... as a very young New Zealander him visiting New Zealand in the 1980s and sort of lining up along the side of the road to wave at the then Prince of Wales as he was visiting.
"I never ever would have imagined as a child, that one day in the future I would be sitting down and having a cup of tea with him a Buckingham Palace."
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said the sausage rolls - a well-known favourite of his - which had been made specially for his meeting with King Charles were exceptionally good. Photo: RNZ / Katie Scotcher
PM visits New Zealand troops
The Prime Minister's trip to Buckingham Palace was a stark contrast to his flying visit to a Ministry of Defence army camp in Wiltshire earlier in the day.
New Zealand troops have been training Ukrainian civilians at the camp for almost a year.
The government yesterday extended that deployment until at least June 2024, as part of a package of further support for Ukraine.
So far, more than a thousand Ukrainians have been trained by New Zealanders and for the vast majority, it is their first experience of live combat.
New Zealand troops are training Ukrainian civilians in the UK. Photo: RNZ / Katie Scotcher
Over five weeks they take part in drills and learn how to use guns, drones and how to navigate Russian trenches.
Hipkins watched Ukrainians take part in a training drill and described it as "confronting."
"I think when you consider that these are people who have just been drawn from all walks of life ... they could have been teachers, lawyers, whatever they might have been, they then get five very intensive weeks of training, and then they are literally straight into it when they get back home.
"That's pretty confronting just to see that reality but the level of resolve, the level of determination, is also quite inspiring as well," Hipkins said.
Dymetro, a 43-year-old Ukrainian soldier in-training, told RNZ he was a copywriter for an international ad agency before the war.
"When the war starts, first of all, I make sure that my family will be in safety... So I forced them to go to the United States for their safety. I kept on working, donating to help my armed forces and finally I decided to join myself because somebody should finish this job," he said.
Dymetro, 43, is being trained by New Zealand troops at in the UK. Photo: RNZ / Katie Scotcher
Dymetro is two weeks into his training at the army camp and said he was "excited" to be taught by "the absolute top".
"We were training through different scenarios. For example, ambush of enemies, or fighting in the forest, fighting in the field, fighting during the night. Absolutely different scenarios that I hope that they will be helpful."
When asked if going to war was something you could prepare for, Dymetro told RNZ he sometimes questioned that himself.
"Sometimes I think about it myself and think 'oh my god, I'm going to war'. But at the same time, we have no choice because they invaded our country.
"They want to kill everyone, so somebody should fight back. Otherwise, we are risking even more. Of course going to war you risk your life, but not going to war you risk life of millions of other people."
