“With people like Nuland directing things, I thank our lucky stars that Putin is a restrained men.”
Putin (and Xi, for that matter) are able to see the BIG PICTURE, and thus haven’t taken the Neocon bait. Nuland is simply hell-bent to destroy Russia, driven by her Ukrainian roots, particularly how her grandparents were treated under Stalin.
I remember, long ago, that people who immigrated to the US were supposed put aside their blood-feuds, but now some of them climb their way to the top levels of our government to carry them out.
From Wikipedia:
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.
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. 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”.
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. 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.”
Nuland left the State Department in January 2017, amid the departure of many career officials who left in the early days of the Trump administration.
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.
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.
In July 2021 Nuland met with Belarussian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya in Washington.
In March 2022, Nuland expressed concern that Russia would get control of Ukraine’s biological research facilities during its invasion of Ukraine.
At a United States Congressional hearing in early 2023, Nuland stated regarding the 2022 Nord Stream pipeline sabotage, “I am, and I think the administration is, very gratified to know that Nord Stream 2 is now... a hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Nuland