A Russian diplomat resigned: “I have never been ashamed of my country

Boris Bondarev said that the President of Russia Vladimir Putin he may have spent the last two decades on “developing the country” but instead made it “a kind of total horror, a threat to the world.”

Bondarev will know: He has spent his career promoting Putin’s foreign policy.

Bondarev, a mid-level diplomat at Russia’s United Nations mission in Geneva, on Monday became Russia’s most prominent official to resign and publicly criticized the war in Ukraine since the Feb. 24 invasion.

Although his hurtful message is unlikely to reach most Russians because of the state’s dominance in the media, his resignation showed that hidden dissatisfaction in the Russian bureaucracy despite the face of the national unity that the Kremlin has worked so hard to create.

“Those who thought of this war wanted only one thing: to stay in power forever, to live in pompous and humble palaces, to sail on yachts comparable in tonnage and cost the entire Russian navy. , to enjoy unlimited power and absolute impunity, ”Bondarev said. in an email to colleagues on Monday morning.

“To achieve that, they are willing to sacrifice as many lives as necessary.”

This is the latest case of unrest among the Russian elite to come to light.

Putin’s climate envoy Anatoly Chubais resigned and left the country in March, over his opposition to the war, but did not comment publicly.

Several Russian state television journalists have resigned, including an employee who stormed the set of a live news broadcast with an anti-war sign.

And several business leaders spoke out, including a banking tycoon who said the Kremlin pressured him liquidate your assets because of his resistance to war.

But the Kremlin has made strenuous efforts to silence such dissent.

On state television, opponents of the war were regularly labeled traitors.

A law signed by Putin in March punishes “wrong information”About war, possibly defined as anything that goes against the government line, with up to 15 years in prison.

As a result, almost no government official spoke out against the aggression.

In a telephone interview from Geneva, Bondarev said it was safer for him to speak abroad but he felt he was in a state of “general uncertainty”And he did not know what would happen to him.

He said that while he believed he was in the minority among Russian diplomats for opposition to the war, he was not alone.

He said he knew some diplomats who quietly resigned after the war started.

It is impossible to verify that statement.

“There are people, not so few, who think like me,” he said.

“But I think most of them are still enslaved by this propaganda that they receive and, in part, created.”

Bondarev said responsibility for the war went beyond Putin and with the Russian Foreign Ministry, where he said he worked for 20 years.

Russian diplomats, he said, were complicit in pretending that Putin could achieve an easy victory in Ukraine.

“They are wrong in Ukraine; they are wrong about the West; they’re basically all wrong, ”Bondarev said, referring to the worldview before the Kremlin invasion.

“The diplomats of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs are also to blame here, for not passing on the information we should have, for softening it and exposing it. seems like everything is great”.

Bondarev, part of the group working on weapons control and disarmament at Russia’s mission in Geneva, said he saw the information misleading cabled in Moscow in recent weeks.

“Instead of presenting their own analysis as objectively as possible along with their suggestions on how to proceed, we often present information that you will definitely like it“, he said.

“That’s the basic standard.”

In his email to colleagues, he said he “should have resigned at least three months ago” when Russia invaded, but was delayed because he had an unfinished family business and “he had to put together my decision.”

“I just can’t share it. bloody, stupid and completely unnecessary embarrassmentBondarev wrote.

In the interview, he said he had been disillusioned with Russian government service even before the invasion, “when we weren’t such outcasts,” but he stayed because of decent salaries and interesting trips to work and people he met. met.

Russia’s state media did not immediately report on Bondarev’s resignation, and the Foreign Ministry did not comment as the working day in Moscow approached the end.

Bondarev, who is listed as an adviser to Russia’s mission on the UN website, confirmed his identity in a video call to The New York Times and by sending an image of his diplomatic passport.

Bondarev said the thing that has bothered him the most in his workplace since the attack was the indifference where some of his fellow Russian diplomats chatted about possible nuclear attacks against the West, even as they worked on arms control.

On Russian state television, commentators raised the specter of a nuclear conflict with increasing frequency while describing the fighting in Ukraine as a war. hint of the West against Russia.

“They think that if you hit a town in the United States with a nuclear attack, Americans will immediately panic and run on their knees begging for mercy,” Bondarev said, describing in comments by his colleagues.

“That’s what a lot of our people think, and I’m afraid this is the line they’re crossing in Moscow.”

He said that when he suggested to his colleagues that they might not want their children to live in “radioactive ruins”, they laughed and said “it’s about values”, echoing Putin, who in an effort to give justified his aggression has often described Russia as a fight for “traditional values” against a decadent West.

But Bondarev said Putin’s war was really about the president’s efforts to stay in power amid a stagnant economy and growing public discontent, and the lack of ideology to mobilize the masses.

“How do you stay and hold power, without losing it in the face of such suffering goals?” I asked.

“We have to invent war.”

Bondarev said he doesn’t have a solid career plan yet.

Sa LinkedInafter posting his resignation statement, he wrote: “Job offers are welcome.”

Nick Cumming-Bruce contributed reporting from Geneva.

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