Former French prime minister François Fillon said on Friday he had resigned from the boards of two Russian firms in protest over Russia's invasion of Ukraine, reports U.S. News.
"This is a collective failure, but in the hierarchy of responsibilities, Vladimir Putin alone is guilty of having started a preventable conflict," Fillon wrote in an opinion piece for French weekly paper Le Journal du Dimanche.
He said that in such conditions, he could not continue being a member of the boards of Russian state-controlled oil company Zarubezhneft and petrochemical company Sibur.
Fillon, who served as premier under President Nicolas Sarkozy from 2007-2012, joined Sibur, Russia's largest petrochemical producer, at the end of 2021.
Large Russian corporations frequently employ former high-ranking European politicians for their ties and influence.