Victoria Nuland, a notorious Russia hawk most known for her role in the 2014 coup in Ukraine, will be retiring from the State Department in the coming weeks, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced on Tuesday.
Nuland has worked as the under-secretary of state for political affairs since 2021 and served as the acting deputy secretary of state for a few months until the position was filled by Kurt Campbell, a notorious China hawk.
Nuland is the wife of Robert Kagan, one of the most influential American neoconservatives, and has worked for multiple administrations. In the George W. Bush administration, she served as deputy foreign policy advisor to then-Vice President Dick Cheney from 2003-2005 and later as the US representative to NATO.
In the Obama administration, Nuland worked as a State Department spokeswoman and then as the assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, from where she supported the Maidan protests in Ukraine that led to the overthrow of former President Victor Yanukovych.
A leaked phone call between Nuland and then-US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt that was published in February 2014, not long before Yanukovych fled Ukraine, revealed the two US officials were discussing who should be in the next Ukrainian government.
The 2014 coup sparked the civil war in the Donbas, led to Russia absorbing Crimea, and NATO providing training and other kinds of support for Ukraine. These factors and others ultimately led to the February 2022 Russian invasion.
In her current role, Nuland championed the proxy war in Ukraine and has been responsible for some of the most hawkish and reckless rhetoric coming from the Biden administration. In a recent interview with CNN, Nuland vowed the US would continue to “tighten the noose” on Russian President Vladimir Putin as part of her pitch for new Ukraine aid despite the reality that Ukraine is losing badly on the battlefield.
Nuland will be temporarily replaced by John Bass, another career US government official who currently serves as the under-secretary of state for management. Bass was previously the US ambassador to Afghanistan during the withdrawal, and according to his biography on the State Department’s website, he also worked on the staff of former Vice President Dick Cheney.