A big fat rat is leaving the ship.
One might interpret this as the State Department's admittance of defeat in the U.S. war against Russia in Ukraine:
On the Retirement of Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland – Anthony Blinken / State Department, Mar 5 2024
Victoria Nuland has let me know that she intends to step down in the coming weeks as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs – a role in which she has personified President Biden’s commitment to put diplomacy back at the center of our foreign policy and revitalize America’s global leadership at a crucial time for our nation and the world.
…
[I]t’s Toria’s leadership on Ukraine that diplomats and students of foreign policy will study for years to come. Her efforts have been indispensable to confronting Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, marshaling a global coalition to ensure his strategic failure, and helping Ukraine work toward the day when it will be able to stand strongly on its own feet – democratically, economically, and militarily.
…
President Biden and I have asked our Under Secretary for Management John Bass to serve as Acting Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs until Toria’s replacement is confirmed.
Victoria Nuland, a member of the neo-conservative Kagan clan, is only 62 years old – too young to retire regularly.
She will be remembered for handing out cookies to anti-government demonstrators in Ukraine and for installing the 2014 coup regime.
That has been her main project in the State Department. But the 2014 Maidan putsch that turn the Ukraine into a battering ram against Russia, has ended in a complete failure.
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Neither was Russia 'weakened' by the war nor has Ukraine any perspective to survive but as some Russian controlled land-locked backwater country in Europe's east.
Given that billions were spent on Ukraine with little controls and nothing to show for Nuland, and her family, have certainly made a bit on the side. One wonders if any of the ongoing and coming investigations into the black hole Ukraine will leave them unscarred.
As even Guardian commentators are now waking up to the mess they helped create it is high time for European politicians to also finally accept this reality:
Western Europe has no conceivable interest in escalating the Ukraine war through a long-range missile exchange. While it should sustain its logistical support for Ukrainian forces, it has no strategic interest in Kyiv’s desire to drive Russia out of the majority Russian-speaking areas of Crimea or Donbas. It has every interest in assiduously seeking an early settlement and starting the rebuilding of Ukraine.
As for the west’s “soft power” sanctions on Russia, they have failed miserably, disrupting the global trading economy in the process. Sanctions may be beloved of western diplomats and thinktanks. They may even hurt someone – not least Britain’s energy users – but they have not devastated the Russian economy or changed Putin’s mind. This year Russia’s growth rate is expected to exceed Britain’s.
The crass ineptitude of a quarter of a century of western military interventions should have taught us some lessons. Apparently not.