Victoria Nuland

Victoria Jane Nuland (born July 1, 1961) is an American diplomat serving as under secretary of state for political affairs since 2021.

Nuland was born in 1961 to Sherwin B. Nuland, a surgeon born to Eastern European Jewish immigrants from Bessarabia, then part of Russian Empire, with the last name Nudelman, and a Christian British native mother, Rhona McKhann, née Goulston.

She graduated from Choate Rosemary Hall in 1979.

She has two younger half-siblings, Amelia and William.

She earned a bachelor of arts degree from Brown University in 1983, where she studied Russian literature, political science, and history.

She speaks Russian and French, and a smattering of Chinese.

From 1993 to 1996, during Bill Clinton's presidency, Nuland was chief of staff to deputy secretary of state Strobe Talbott before moving on to serve as deputy director for former Soviet Union affairs.

From 2003 to 2005, Nuland served as the principal Deputy National Security Adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, exercising an influential role during the Iraq War.

From 2005 to 2008, during President George W. Bush's second term, Nuland served as U.S. ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Brussels, where she concentrated on mobilizing European support for the NATO intervention in Afghanistan.

In the summer of 2011, Nuland became special envoy for Conventional Armed Forces in Europe and then became State Department spokesperson.

A former member of the US Foreign Service, she served as assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs from 2013 to 2017 and the 18th U.S. ambassador to NATO from 2005 to 2008.

Between July 2023 and February 2024, Nuland served as acting deputy secretary of state following the retirement of Wendy Sherman.

Nuland held the rank of career ambassador, the highest diplomatic rank in the U.S. Foreign Service.

In May 2013, Nuland was nominated to act as assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs and was sworn in on September 18, 2013.

In her role as assistant secretary, she managed diplomatic relations with fifty countries in Europe and Eurasia, as well as with NATO, the European Union and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

During the Maidan Uprising in Ukraine, Nuland made appearances supporting the Maidan protesters.

In December 2013, she said in a speech to the US–Ukraine Foundation that the U.S. had spent about $5 billion on democracy-building programs in Ukraine since 1991.

The Russian government seized on this statement, claiming it was evidence the U.S. was orchestrating a color revolution.

On February 4, 2014, a recording of a phone call between Nuland and U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt on January 28, 2014, was published on YouTube.

The call followed an offer made on January 25, 2014, by Ukrainian president Yanukovych to include two members of the opposition in his government to calm the Maidan protests in Ukraine, one being that of his Prime Minister.

Nuland and Pyatt voiced their opinions of this offer, specifically on the post of Prime Minister, giving their opinion of several opposition personalities.

Nuland told Pyatt that Arseniy Yatsenyuk would be the best candidate to hold this post.

Nuland suggested the United Nations, rather than the European Union, should be involved in a full political solution, adding "fuck the EU".

The following day, Christiane Wirtz, Deputy Government Spokesperson and Deputy Head of the Press and Information Office of the German Federal Government, stated that German Chancellor Angela Merkel termed Nuland's remark "absolutely unacceptable."

The president of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, condemned the remark as "unacceptable".

Department of State spokesperson Jen Psaki said the discussion was not evidence of any American plan to influence the political outcome, remarking that "It shouldn't be a surprise that at any point there have been discussions about recent events and offers and what is happening on the ground".

Nuland was the lead U.S. point person for Ukraine's Revolution of Dignity, establishing loan guarantees to Ukraine, including a $1 billion loan guarantee in 2014, and the provisions of non-lethal assistance to the Ukrainian military and border guard.

Along with Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, she is seen as a leading supporter of defensive weapons delivery to Ukraine.

During her testimony, Nuland noted de facto 2014 Russian intervention of Ukraine which she said, "shattered any remaining illusions about this Kremlin's willingness to abide by international law or live by the rules of the institutions that Russia joined at the end of the Cold War."

In 2016, Nuland urged Ukraine to start prosecuting corrupt officials: "It's time to start locking up people who have ripped off the Ukrainian population for too long and it is time to eradicate the cancer of corruption".

While serving as the Department of State's lead diplomat on the Ukraine crisis, Nuland pushed European allies to take a harder line on Russian expansionism.

During a June 7, 2016, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearing titled "Russian Violations of Borders, Treaties, and Human Rights", Nuland described U.S. diplomatic outreach to the former Soviet Union and efforts to build a constructive relationship with Russia.

Nuland left the State Department in January 2017, amid the departure of many other career officials during the early days of the Trump administration.

She is the former CEO of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), serving from January 2018 until early 2019, and is also the Brady-Johnson distinguished practitioner in grand strategy at Yale University and a member of the board of the National Endowment for Democracy.

She served as a nonresident fellow in the Brookings Institution's foreign policy program and senior counselor at the Albright Stonebridge Group.

On March 5, 2024, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that Nuland will retire "in the coming weeks".

On January 24, 2018, The Washington Post published an interview with Nuland where she opined on the work of President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

She described an exodus of career foreign service officials and dysfunction within the State Department, and stated that the American judiciary and media were under assault.

Nuland also decried a trend towards American isolationism, stating: "When we withdraw and say it's every nation for itself, you open the door for countries dissatisfied with their territorial position and influence in the international system—or with the system itself."

She encouraged whole-government responses to international issues, stating, "Military leaders would be the first to say military solutions alone result in more and longer military entanglements. The role of American diplomats and political leaders is to work concurrently with the military to bring to bear all of the political tools we have."