Victoria J. Nuland, the State Department’s fourth-ranking official and a determined advocate of Vladimir V. Putin’s tough policy toward Russia, will retire this month after more than 30 years of government service.
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken announced Ms. Nuland’s departure as undersecretary for political affairs on Tuesday in a statement highlighting her «fierce passion» for freedom, democracy and human rights, as well as as for America’s promotion of these causes abroad.
Mr. Blinken highlighted his work on Ukraine, which he called «indispensable in confronting Putin’s full-scale invasion» of the country.
Ms. Nuland has held numerous positions at the State Department, including spokesperson, and previously served as Deputy National Security Advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney. But she has established herself as a Russia specialist who has long argued for strong resistance to Mr. Putin’s territorial ambitions and foreign policy influence.
As the State Department’s top Russian official during the Obama administration, she unsuccessfully advocated for arming Ukraine with anti-tank missiles, and under the Biden administration she was the one of the biggest supporters of sending more and better American weapons to Ukraine.
A skilled bureaucratic operator, she presented her arguments with a keen wit and candor that elicited a mixture of admiration and fear from her colleagues. “She always says what she thinks,” Mr. Blinken’s statement gently noted.
She became better known in 2014 after referring to the European Union in a phone call about Ukraine policy that was recorded and leaked, in what U.S. officials say was the work of Russia.
Under the Biden administration, Ms. Nuland has become a lightning rod for skeptics of U.S. support for Ukraine. “No one is pushing this war more than Nuland,” said Tesla co-founder Elon Musk. wrote on social networking site last February.
She was vilified in Moscow as an avatar of a Washington establishment seen as conspiring to weaken Russia and even topple Mr. Putin. Russian officials and the media constantly recall how Ms. Nuland, then the U.S. assistant secretary for European and Eurasian affairs, handed out food to protesters in Kiev’s central square in early 2014, who ultimately toppled Ukraine’s pro-backed leader. Kremlin.
“An anti-government coup took place in Ukraine in 2014 after Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland distributed cookies to terrorists,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei V said last year .Lavrov. (Ms. Nuland said she was handing out sandwiches, not cookies.)
Ms. Nuland’s departure was treated as major news by the Kremlin-backed English-language news site RT, which featured a red banner on its homepage and the headline «NULAND LEAVES.»
RT cited Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova attributing Ms. Nuland’s departure to «the failure of the Biden administration’s anti-Russian policy.» She charged that “Russophobia, proposed by Victoria Nuland as the main foreign policy concept of the United States, is dragging Democrats down like a stone.”
Ms. Nuland spent much of the last year serving as acting deputy secretary of state following the retirement of Wendy Sherman, who had served in the role for the first two and a half years of the administration Biden.
She had been seen as a natural candidate to replace Ms. Sherman full-time. But Mr. Blinken tapped Kurt Campbell, a former senior National Security Council official for Asia, for the job. Mr. Campbell was confirmed by the Senate on February 6.
Mr. Blinken said the department’s Undersecretary for Management, John Bass, would assume Ms. Nuland’s duties in an acting capacity until a replacement is confirmed.
Some analysts have interpreted Mr. Campbell’s choice as a sign that President Biden and Mr. Blinken view managing America’s relationship with China as their top priority, despite how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine Russia has absorbed much of Mr. Biden’s foreign policy.
Ms. Nuland spoke publicly last month about the future of Ukraine, the country in which she has invested several hundred hours of her life.
“If Putin wins in Ukraine, he will not stop there and autocrats around the world will feel emboldened to change the status quo by force,” she warned in a speech at the Center for Strategic Studies and international organizations from Washington.
Mr. Putin “thinks he can wait for all of us,” she said. “We have to prove him wrong.”