A veteran Russian diplomat to the United Nations office in Geneva has handed in his resignation and sent a statement to foreign colleagues criticizing the “aggressive war unleashed” by Russian President Vladimir Putin in Ukraine.

Boris Bondarev, who worked as a counselor at Russia’s permanent mission to the UN in Geneva, told the Reuters news agency: “I went to the mission like any other Monday morning and I forwarded my resignation letter and I walked out.”

In the statement, circulated to a number of diplomatic missions in Geneva, he condemned the invasion of Ukraine and lashed out at Russia’s foreign ministry.

“For twenty years of my diplomatic career I have seen different turns of our foreign policy, but never have I been so ashamed of my country as on February 24 of this year,” Bondarev said in the statement first published by UN Watch, an advocacy..

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