Tony Abbott’s threat to “shirtfront” Vladimir Putin has been labelled as “immature” by a Russian embassy official, who pointed out while Abbott may be a fit cyclist, the Russian president was a judo champion.

Embassy second secretary Alexander Odoevskiy also told Guardian Australia that the west, including Australia, had lost interest in the investigation into the crash of MH17, with Abbott preferring instead to play politics and conduct “megaphone statements and muscle flexing”. He also accused Bill Shorten of “unfriendly language”.



Odoevskiy said the Russian government had received no request from Abbott for a bilateral meeting during the G20 summit. He characterised Australian-Russian relations as at a “historic low”, compared with a high under the Howard government.

“We don’t treat it as tough language, we treat it as immature language,” Odoevskiy said.

“From a personal perspective, I would just say that Tony Abbott is very good at cycling, he is very fit, but president Putin is a judo champion.”

Odoevskiy said Abbott’s comments were directed almost entirely at a domestic audience, as not many people outside Australia would know what the term “shirtfront” meant. It generally refers to a front-on chest bump or rough handling, a move which Odoevskiy pointed out was illegal.

“I had to do research on it. Personally I note this is no longer used in the current game. It is outdated, it is illegal and you do get penalised for it,” he said.

“We are reluctant to comment officially on the statements. They are not helpful in any way, we are concentrating on making peace in Ukraine. We have 100,000 refugees from Ukraine in Russia. It’s very difficult so we are not involved in exchanging megaphone statements and muscle flexing.”

Odoevskiy said, in spite of the megaphone diplomacy, the west had lost interest in the investigation into MH17. He said at the crash site – where 298 passengers and crew were killed when MH17 was shot down – there were still large pieces of the Malaysian Airlines plane.

“There have been a lot of question marks raised by the Russian ministry of defence which have been unanswered by Australia, Holland and Kiev,” he said.

He said Russia had “co-operated from day one” of the MH17 crash, while Australia sponsored a UN resolution condemning the shooting down of the plane and demanding full access to the site.

“We all know from day one, [Australian] leadership promoted the start of a blame game and it was not helpful to real investigation,” Odoevskiy said.

“My feeling is more could be done to put people on the ground. There is lots of evidence, on the ground, large fragments on the ground, still lying there. In a normal investigation, those pieces would have been collected. The aircraft would have been reconstructed [but] the west has lost interest. Everyone talks about politics. This is frustrating.”

He described Russian relations at an “historic low”, down from the high in 2007 when former prime minister John Howard invited Putin to separate bilateral meetings during the Apec summit.

“That was a big success, then relations were on a historic high. Now under this Liberal government, relations are on a historic low,” he said.

“Then the Coalition took a stance to develop a relationship with Russia … since then the bilateral relations are on historic lows due to recent developments.”

Abbott rejected Russian criticism of his comments as immature and refused to back away from his colourful description – repeating that the “plane was brought down by Russian-backed rebels using Russian-supplied equipment”.



“We have all seen the impact of Russian policy in eastern Europe, we have all seen the impact of Russian policy on the innocent people on board flight MH17.

“I think it’s the very least I can do, speaking for Australian dead and the families of Australian dead and indeed speaking for the world’s victims is to have a very robust conversation with president Putin.”

Asked why his office had still not requested a one-on-one meeting with Putin, Abbott said the G20 was still a month away and his program was still being finalised.

“I certainly expect while he’s a guest of Australia, he will undertake to have a conversation with the Australian prime minister,” Abbott said.