Top Russian diplomat at the UN resigns: ‘Never have I been so ashamed of my country’
Russia’s Counsellor to the United Nations mission in Geneva has resigned saying “never have I been so ashamed of my country” because of the war in Ukraine.
In a strongly-worded letter, Boris Bondarev quit his job saying it was “long overdue”, but after a 20-year career he was leaving the diplomatic service.
He wrote he’d seen “different turns of our foreign policy, but never have I been so ashamed of my country as on February 24 of this year”, marking the date the Kremlin invaded.
“The aggressive war unleashed by Putin against Ukraine, and in fact against the entire Western world, is not only a crime against the Ukrainian people, but also, perhaps, the most serious crime against the people of Russia”.
He condemned the war’s supporters as wanting to “remain in power forever, live in pompous tasteless palaces, sail on yachts comparable in tonnage and cost to the entire Russian Navy, enjoying unlimited power and complete impunity.”
“I regret to admit that over all these twenty years the level of lies and unprofessionalism ..has been increasing all the time” he said, but that in “recent years, this has become simply catastrophic.”
“Instead of unbiased information, impartial analysis and sober forecasting, there are propaganda clichés in the spirit of Soviet newspapers of the 1930s. A system has been built that deceives itself.”
He also took aim at foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, who is a “good illustration of the degradation of this system”, and that the ministry “is not about diplomacy. It is all about warmongering, lies and hatred.”
“I studied to be a diplomat and have been a diplomat for twenty years. The Ministry has become my home and family. But I simply cannot any longer share in this bloody, witless and absolutely needless ignominy.”