Victoria Nuland Quotes

While our diplomats have returned from Kabul, as you know and we’ve officially suspended our presence there, our ongoing intensive diplomatic work with partners and allies in Afghanistan continues. First of all, as you know, it is this department and the Secretary’s top priority to continue to evacuate any American citizen who wishes to leave Afghanistan. We believe there are between 100 and 200 Americans who remain in Afghanistan who may have some interest in leaving, and the Secretary is leading our diplomatic efforts to ensure safe passage for them and for any Afghan partners and foreign nationals who still want to leave Afghanistan. And as the President said, there is no deadline on the effort to ensure safe passage for those who want it. Within this building, the Afghan task force continues to work 24/7 on evacuation efforts. And since August of – August 14th, the task force has been engaging American citizens in Afghanistan. They’ve made more than 55,000 phone calls, sent more than 33,000 emails, and this outreach continues today and will in the days and weeks ahead as long as there is a need.

Ukraine has biological research facilities, which in fact, we are now quite concerned Russian troops, Russian forces may be seeking to gain control of, so we are working with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach.

Few nations elicit such fatalism among American policymakers and analysts as Vladimir Putin’s Russia. For some, the country is an irredeemable pariah state, responsive only to harsh punishment and containment. Others see a wronged and resurgent great power that deserves more accommodation. Perspectives vary by the day, the issue, and the political party. Across the board, however, resignation has set in about the state of U.S.-Russian relations, and Americans have lost confidence in their own ability to change the game. But today’s Russia is neither monolithic nor immutable.

It has been an enormous interagency effort, but it’s also taught a whole new generation of American diplomats what it takes to rally global support in defense of democracy, what it feels like to be part of an endeavor that is absolutely existential for the world that they are going to live in going forward.

I would say it starts with showing up, which is what we’re doing today – coming to Africa, engaging here with our partners both in government and the NGO sector and in the business sector to talk about what more we can do together. But it is also, as I said at the – during the opening, about embedding our Africa strategy in our larger strategy to strengthen the democracies, strengthen our partnerships, strengthen our multilateral approach to common challenges, whether they are health challenges, economic challenges, or security challenges, and to do them together; and also, to encourage and support African-led efforts to solve African problems, again, whether they’re in the security realm or whether they’re working to integrate economies, build infrastructure, recover from COVID, all of those kinds of things. So that’s how – those are the – that’s the main difference. I think you will likely see President Biden invite African leaders to convene sometime in 2022. You’ll see a lot more travel. I am the appetizer – let’s put it that way – and hopefully folk who are even – who are more senior than I am, we are laying the table here.

I think that's most important is that we are listening to the Ukrainians as this war changes. Russia, as you know, is now planning to mass its forces from the east and come in heavy that way, which changes what they need. They need our -- heavy artillery. They need long range rocket systems. They need anti-ship missiles of the kind that they were able to use on the Russian ship in the Black Sea, the Moskva, their flagship, just a couple of days ago. And that's what we and our allies are assembling and continuing to get into Ukraine as these Ukrainians fight so bravely for their freedom, but also for the principle of freedom and sovereignty for all of us....
What I would say is, as you -- as you made clear at the top of your story, the United States has provided more than $3 billion worth of weapons to Ukraine. Our allies have matched that. So, double that amount over the course of this year. We were also the first to warn that Russia would invade Ukraine, starting as far back as late October, November. I think even the Ukrainians couldn't imagine the horror of what is happening now. But I think it's a direct result, not only of their bravery and their courage and their skill on the battlefield, but the fact that we've been working with them and training them, as have other NATO allies, for some eight years that they are able to stand up to the onslaught of the Russian army.

Because I had seen our best efforts to forestall a violent choice by Putin fail in ’14, I was more prepared than many... Everybody at the beginning was relatively skeptical — with the exception of the Canadians and the U.K., ...that he would actually take this step. The fact that we found the [Russian war] plans when we did — and they were as robust as they were... gave us the time that we needed to prepare. A lot of us were veterans of 2014, ’15 and ’16, and felt that if we had done more faster then to help Ukraine, we might have had a better result... The day of was this horrible, awful realization that he had not bluffed... We were preparing for many scenarios in which the Ukrainians essentially had to get Kyiv back...We didn’t know which scenario we were going to be looking at... There were many things we were expecting that actually didn’t happen... None of us expected the Ukrainians to be able to withstand as strongly as they did in those first four or five days... All of a sudden, we realized that Ukraine — and particularly the government, the leadership, the capital — might be able to resist... we began to become more optimistic that if we helped Ukraine as much as we possibly could, that the country might survive.