How Russia’s foreign policy is determined by its own propaganda

Boris Bondaryev was a Russian diplomat for 20 years until he resigned in protest at the invasion of Ukraine. Now he reports from the inner workings of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

ZBoris Bondaryev worked for the Russian Foreign Ministry for twenty years. Because of the Russian attack on Ukraine, he resigned under protest – as the only Russian diplomat so far. “The war of aggression that Putin has unleashed against Ukraine and the whole Western world is not only a crime against the Ukrainian people, but perhaps also the greatest crime against the people of Russia, in which he buried all the hopes and prospects of a prosperous free society in our country,” Bondaryev wrote in a statement released May 23.

In an article for the American magazine “Foreign Affairs” and in interviews in Russian-language media financed by America, the 42-year-old Bondaryev has now described his motives for the public break with the Russian state. He gives informative insights into the inner workings of the Russian Foreign Ministry. Bondaryev told Internet TV channel Currenttime.tv that he wanted to show how Russian diplomacy has come from the beginning of his career in the early 2000s, “when our foreign policy was more or less adequate,” to the current “low point where it has reached a… appendage of the Russian state’s propaganda machine”.