Welcome to Hard Talk on the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sacker. My guest today has seen his world

turned upside down in the past year, and he knowingly brought the turmoil upon himself. A year ago,

Boris Bondareff was just another mid-ranking Russian diplomat, a foreign ministry careerist who had served in Cambodia and

Mongolia and was enjoying a comfortable life as an arms control specialist at Russia's mission to the

UN in Geneva. And then, last February, Vladimir Putin launched his all-out invasion of Ukraine.

Bondarev was appalled, not for a moment buying

the Kremlin's rationale that this was somehow a preemptive, defensive move to safeguard Russia

from NATO expansionism and the West's neo-Nazi puppet regime in Kiev. So in May,

Bondarev, having secured the safe arrival in Switzerland of his

wife and cat, quit his post and issued a scathing public condemnation of Russian aggression. He was the

first diplomat to break ranks, and inevitably he was vilified in Moscow as a traitor. Now he lives in an undisclosed safe house in Switzerland with round-the-clock protection.

He continues to speak out against what he calls the fascism of Putin's Russia.

This is a man who has turned on the system which offered him a comfortable life for two decades. Why haven't others emulated

his very public act of dissent? Is it fear, brainwashing, or is there a powerful shared

ethno-nationalism powering Putin's war? Well, Boris Bondarev joins me now from Switzerland. Welcome to Hard Talk. I want to begin,

if I may, by getting a sense of what life is like for you today. Last day, you quit your post.

You delivered a scathing condemnation of Putin and his war. So how is life for you today? It's become relatively easier than it was

because I don't have to go to my office anymore. And I, well, officially and practically,

I am now unemployed, so I have a lot of free time to think and to read and to look for

information I need in order to have my opinion on what is going on around Russia and Ukraine and

Europe and all. You can't go home? No, I don't think so. I don't think I can. Well, I can physically,

but I don't think it would be a very pleasant trip,

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