Acting Prime Minister Carmel Sepuloni says she hasn't been briefed by officials on the uprising by Russian mercenary forces at the weekend.
The rouge Wagner soldiers marched toward Moscow on the weekend in what leader Yevgeny Prigozhin said was a protest.
The Kremlin called it a mutiny and treason.
Prigozhin has since claimed it wasn't an attempt to overthrow Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The US has said the mutiny showed "cracks" in Putin's leadership, while military strategists believe it could have serious implications for Russia's war on Ukraine.
But Sepuloni hadn't "received a formal briefing on this", she told AM on Tuesday.
While she'd been given "some" information about the crisis, Sepuloni said "I probably know as much as what the media has put out there".
"I have not received any formal briefing on what is currently happening in Russia."
Canberra has expressed that the mutiny was a "disaster" for Putin, with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese telling the ABC it was the result of the Russian President overplaying his hand in Ukraine "and he got it wrong".
Sepuloni, however, didn't know if Prime Minister Chris Hipkins - currently in China for a trade delegation - had been briefed on the Russia crisis.
She defended not knowing more about the matter, saying she'd only been in the acting Prime Minister role since Sunday.
"The PM may have been briefed but I don't know if that's the case."
