VETERAN KREMLIN DIPLOMAT QUITS, SAYS ‘ASHAMED OF MY COUNTRY’
KYIV, Ukraine — A captured Russian soldier who pleaded guilty to killing a civilian was sentenced by a Ukrainian court Monday to life in prison — the maximum — amid signs the Kremlin may, in turn, put on trial some of the fighters who surrendered at Mariupol’s steelworks.
Meanwhile, in a rare public expression of opposition to the war from the ranks of the Russian elite, a veteran Kremlin diplomat resigned and sent a scathing letter to foreign colleagues in which he said of the invasion, “Never have I been so ashamed of my country as on Feb. 24.”
Boris Bondarev, a veteran Russian diplomat at the U.N. office at Geneva, quit and sent a letter denounc- ing the “aggressive war unleashed” by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Bondarev told The Associated Press: “It is intolerable what my government is doing now.”
In his letter, Bondarev said those who conceived the war “want only one thing — 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.”
He also said Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs is all about “warmongering, lies and hatred.”
Meanwhile, in the first of what could be a multitude of war crimes trials held by Ukraine, Russian Sgt. Vadim Shishimarin, 21, was sentenced for the killing of a 62-year-old man who was shot in the head in a village in the northeastern Sumy region in the opening days of the war.
Shishimarin, a member of a tank unit, had claimed he was following orders, and he apologized to the man’s widow in court.
His Ukraine-appointed defense attorney, Victor Ovsyanikov, argued his client had been unprepared for the “violent military confrontation.” He said he would appeal.
Mary Ellen O’Connell, an expert on international law at the University of Notre Dame, said that putting Shishimarin on trial could prove “extremely detrimental to Ukrainian soldiers in the hands of Russia.”