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One of the Biden administration’s toughest Russia hawks and the State Department’s third-ranking official, Victoria Nuland, plans to retire within weeks, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday, leaving a gap in the top ranks of U.S. diplomacy as crises in the Middle East and Ukraine threaten to become broader conflagrations.

Nuland, the undersecretary of state for political affairs, previously served as the department’s top Europe-focused diplomat during the Obama administration and was broadly popular among the agency’s rank and file. Inside a strait-laced bureaucracy that sometimes rewards blandness and caution, she stood out for her <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/in-purported-recording-of-us-diplomat-blunt-talk-on-ukraine/2014/02/06/518240a4-8f4b-11e3-84e1-27626c5ef5fb_story.html" target="_blank">unvarnished opinions</a> and tough approach to the Kremlin, which demonized her.

Nuland had served as the department’s No. 2 official, the acting deputy secretary of state, for seven months starting last year following the retirement of <a href="https://apnews.com/article/state-department-wendy-sherman-antony-blinken-c82f8a51e4f771a963c172aca0c1b6f6" target=_blank>Wendy Sherman</a>. But she lost an intra-administration fight to be named permanently to the job to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/11/01/kurt-campbell-deputy-secretary-state/" target=_blank>Kurt Campbell</a>, formerly the White House’s top Asia strategist who was confirmed last month. President Biden’s decision was one of the factors in her departure. The personnel changes leave no women within the senior-most trio of State Department leaders.

Blinken said in a statement Tuesday that Nuland had held “most of the jobs” within the State Department, arming her “with an encyclopedic knowledge of a wide range of issues and regions, and an unmatched capacity to wield the full tool kit of American diplomacy to advance our interests and values.”

Nuland served in Moscow in the 1990s and was later the U.S. ambassador to NATO before becoming the State Department spokeswoman under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. As the top U.S. diplomat for European affairs, she played an active role in U.S. diplomacy in Kyiv as protests against its Kremlin-friendly leader seized the country in late 2013, making her a focus of Russian frustration. Memorably, she <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/in-ukraine-skepticism-greets-new-vow-on-eu/2013/12/12/b005705a-6355-11e3-af0d-4bb80d704888_story.html" target=_blank>handed out cookies and bread</a> to encamped protesters on Kyiv’s central Maidan before the toppling of its then-president.

Nuland left the State Department in early 2017 after <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/donald-trump/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">Donald Trump</a> became president, then returned to the No. 3 job in 2021.

Blinken said it is Nuland’s “leadership on Ukraine that diplomats and students of foreign policy will study for years to come,” noting that she led efforts to build a coalition with European nations to support Kyiv as Russia massed its forces ahead of the February 2022 invasion.

The Russian Foreign Ministry jumped on Nuland’s departure, declaring it a sign that U.S. policy toward Russia was a failure.

“They won’t tell you the reason,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote on Telegram. “But it is simple — the failure of the anti-Russian course of the Biden administration. Russophobia, proposed by Victoria Nuland as the main foreign policy concept of the United States, is dragging the Democrats to the bottom like a stone.”

Nuland will be replaced temporarily by John Bass, another career diplomat who is currently the undersecretary of state for management.

Member of the "Pegasus Project" team that won a George Polk Award, 2021.

Yale University, BA in History

Deep Springs College

Michael Birnbaum is a national security reporter for The Washington Post, covering the State Department and diplomacy. He previously served more than a decade in Europe as The Post’s bureau chief in Brussels, Moscow and Berlin, reporting from more than 40 countries, and he covered climate and security from Washington. He joined The Post in 2008.

Michael Birnbaum

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