By Antonio Ancaya
International Affairs
Pictured above is Victoria Nuland, former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. (Image source: CNN)
Victoria Nuland is a former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs in the United States State Department. As a career foreign service officer, she has held significant influence over American foreign policy, particularly concerning Ukraine. Some argue as I do here, that she played a pivotal role in instigating the current war in Ukraine by manipulating bureaucrats and driving the U.S. toward a conflict that has devastated Ukraine, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of soldiers and an American journalist.
Nuland began her career in the 1990s under Strobe Talbott, later serving as an assistant to Dick Cheney before becoming the U.S. Ambassador to NATO. Her tenure culminated as Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs at the start of the Biden-Harris administration, a position she held until her resignation in March 2024. The overarching goal of American foreign policy has been to weaken and divide Russia, aiming to revert it to the fragmented and politically inert state it was in the 1990s. After the Soviet Union's collapse, the U.S. exploited Russia, importing neoliberal ideology that enriched a few oligarchs while leaving the general populace destitute.
During the 1990s, the U.S. facilitated the rise of oligarchs in the former Soviet republics to control these nations indirectly. This approach turned Ukraine into a hub of corruption, benefiting Washington bureaucrats who engaged in various corrupt practices to funnel state assets into their pockets. When Vladimir Putin took power in 1999, he struck a deal with the oligarchs: they could retain their wealth if they stayed out of politics. Over time, however, Putin replaced these oligarchs with his own loyalists, reducing their power and influence, much to the dismay of the American bureaucratic establishment.
By the late 2000s and early 2010s, it became evident that Putin was resisting American attempts to keep Russia in a state of corruption akin to Ukraine. This resistance culminated in the 2014 revolution, but before delving into that, it's essential to understand Nuland's background further. She is married to Robert Kagan, co-founder of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) in 1998, which promoted American global leadership through military strength and moral clarity. This ideology simplified global politics into "good guys" and "bad guys," with regime change imminent for any nation opposing American interests.
Robert Kagan, now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, influences aggressive American foreign policies. He acts as an intermediary between financial, corporate, and government interests, guiding them toward policies that destabilize nations for economic exploitation and strategic advantage. Victoria Nuland, sharing this ideological background, started her significant career roles as an assistant to Strobe Talbott, then as Deputy Director for Former Soviet Affairs, where she worked to keep former Soviet countries weak for exploitation by American financiers.
During her time as Dick Cheney’s assistant and later as U.S. Ambassador to NATO, she mobilized support for regime change in Iraq and the occupation of Afghanistan. Her role at NATO involved pushing the alliance's boundaries up to Russia's borders, observing Russia's recovery post-Soviet collapse. Between 1999 and 2013, the standard of living in Russia rose, challenging the American establishment's objective of a broken Russia, a goal championed by figures like Nuland and Kagan.
It is because of arrogance that they insist America not only be the biggest and strongest country but far and away the most powerful. They wish to maintain the power imbalance that the United States had after the Second World War. This brings us to the Maidan Revolution, also known as the Revolution of Dignity, in 2013-2014. The West has been trying to pull Ukraine into NATO for quite some time, promising Ukraine a spot in the European Union. Nuland had been pushing Ukraine to be more pro-Western. Viktor Yanukovych, the president of Ukraine at the time, played Europe and Russia against each other for his own benefit and did not solely listen to the West.
Ukraine is a conglomeration of two distinct peoples: the Ukrainian and the Russian. Ethnic Russians dominate the East and South, while ethnic Ukrainians dominate the center and West. The Yanukovych regime did not want to impose anti-Russian measures that many hard-right Ukrainians desired. Groups like the Right Sector, S14, and the Azov Battalion are composed of neo-Nazis who hate ethnic Russians. This animosity aligned with Victoria Nuland and the American bureaucratic establishment's goals. During the Maidan Revolution, Nuland supported the Right Sector, a neo-Nazi group funded by Ukrainian oligarch Igor Kolomoisky. Nuland organized them, and Kolomoisky financed them, including the Azov Battalion.
Nuland cemented a relationship with Dmytro Yarosh, head of the Right Sector, who led the group under her guidance. During the revolution, a tapped phone call between Nuland and Geoffrey Pyatt, then U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, revealed their discussions on forming a successor government even before Yanukovych fell. Nuland chose Arseniy Yatsenyuk as interim prime minister while saving Vitali Klitschko, a political figure and boxer, for later. This micromanagement indicated her orchestration of a coup d’état against Yanukovych.
The ethnic split between central-western Ukrainians and eastern-southern Russians became evident. Washington sided with ethnic Ukrainians, and under Petro Poroshenko, Nuland ensured the government abused ethnic Russians. She also facilitated the supply of weapons to Ukraine to attack the Donbas region. In response, Russia annexed Crimea, angering NATO, which coveted the naval base at Sevastopol. Sevastopol's capture would have deprived Russia of a crucial naval base, making the Black Sea NATO's domain.
Victoria Nuland's political masters in Washington, such as Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, John Kerry, and Mitt Romney, demanded continued political corruption, with their children holding no-show jobs in Ukrainian energy companies. Nuland’s role was to keep this money train going. After the 2014 coup d’état, weapons flowed into Ukraine, benefiting manufacturers. Nuland became the nexus of interests exploiting Ukraine to weaken Russia.
The Trump administration briefly paused this scheme, as Russia's economy took a hit in 2014. Putin focused on economic independence and military strengthening from 2016 to 2020. When the Biden administration took power in 2021, figures like Jake Sullivan and Antony Blinken resumed regime change policies. Sullivan and Blinken were responsible for placing Hunter Biden in Burisma, an energy company. Victoria Nuland, with this team, began planning an invasion of the Donbas.
In October 2021, Nuland visited Moscow and delivered a harsh message to Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s Foreign Minister, threatening to crush the Russian economy unless Russia withdrew from the Donbas. While the U.S. claimed Russia was massing troops on Ukraine’s border, Ukraine was positioning fighters on the Donbas contact line. Nuland pushed for this invasion and appointed Dmytro Yarosh as Zelensky's advisor on the war, despite Yarosh being a neo-Nazi working with Nuland.
Nuland admitted in March 2022 that American Biolabs in Ukraine were intended for use against Russia. She leads this campaign with intimate knowledge of Russian history and is driven by her own motivations, supported by her husband Robert Kagan, and their class of people.
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