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

Boris Bondarev, who worked as a counsellor 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 group.

The date refers to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in what Russian President Vladimir Putin describes as a “special military operation” to “de-nazify” the country.

“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,” the statement said.

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