With the mystery of Victoria Nuland’s sudden exit rising, former CIA analyst Ray McGovern said in an interview that she was a liability at a time when NATO and Russia were getting closer to a direct nuclear-armed confrontation.
In a recent interview, former CIA analyst Ray McGovern conjectured about Victoria Nuland’s reasons for resigning from her prominent role as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, the third-highest ranking official in the State Department.
Her supervisor, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, made her retirement public on Tuesday. But why now, when the administration is trying to hold steady and maintain a firm position on Ukraine, is Biden still pursuing defense aid worth tens of billions of dollars through Republicans in the House?
McGovern told Russia’s Sputnik that the traditionally hawkish Nuland was a liability at a time when NATO and Russia are getting closer to a direct nuclear-armed confrontation, despite rumors that she may be in bad or declining health.
According to billionaire businessman David Sacks, Russia-U.S. peace talks can save the world from World War III, as US engagement in the Ukraine crisis has now been shown to be ineffective.
“My best guess here is that the CIA and the Defense Department and the NSA got this message around saying, ‘look, Victoria’s got her own agenda here,’” said McGovern.
“The president doesn’t really want to strike these ammo depots in Russia or knock down the [Crimean] Bridge,” the former CIA official speculated. We need to control her, so I suppose it’s time for her to retire early.”
Dr. Matthew Crosston, a national security professor at Bowie State University, has put up another notion that isn’t necessarily at odds with the ones mentioned above.
He explained that “a staunch anti-Putinist Nuland was and how fervently she wanted to continue to utilize Ukraine as a platform in which to continue to weaken and/or slight Russia on the global stage — and perhaps even up the ante in that conflict with her support of sending ballistic missiles into Ukraine.” She is aware that the Ukrainian side is losing, though.
She might have seen that the Ukrainian forces were losing ground and decided to leave before they might suffer a complete defeat.
“She undoubtedly understood that if American support lessons or wanes, Ukraine loses, period,” Crosston pointed out. “Perhaps she did not want to be in the Administration that would be responsible for that outcome.”
However, McGovern and Crosston concurred that ceasefire negotiations between Kiev and Moscow remained a very remote possibility, if not impossible, given Nuland’s position as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs (she essentially oversaw all US foreign policy in Europe).
“One thing is certain: as long as Nuland remained in that chair, there was literally no chance such talk could even be theorized. Now it can,” Crosston concluded.
In an interview with The Hill, journalist Glenn Greenwald offered additional commentary on Nuland’s resignation. “Singular monstrousness of Victoria Nuland and her bipartisan, blood-stained, ghoulish career” is how Greenwald puts it.
John Bass, a career diplomat and former ambassador to Afghanistan, has been named as Nuland’s temporary undersecretary upon her retirement. He is the undersecretary of state for management at the moment. It is a little ironic that he managed Biden’s disastrous exit from Afghanistan, and now he will be in charge of Ukraine strategy at a crucial moment when Kiev is obviously in trouble.