In March 2011, McFaul attended, in his official White House capacity, the meeting between Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin, which Biden characterized in his memoir as "argumentative."[18] The two met again in a 2021 summit.[19]
Ambassador to Russia (2011–2014)
Secretary of State John Kerry and McFaul tour Red Square in Moscow on May 7, 2013
In November 2011, Obama nominated McFaul to be the 7th post-SovietUnited States Ambassador to the Russian Federation. On December 17, 2011, the United States Senate confirmed McFaul by unanimous consent.[20] McFaul became the first non-career diplomat to be the U.S. ambassador to Russia.[16] He arrived in Russia just as huge protests were erupting over Vladimir Putin's resumption of the presidency. As ambassador he was accused of "fomenting revolution" by the Russian state media, meeting with Russian pro-democracy activists and commenting frequently on Twitter in English and Russian.[21] In his Washington Post article though he argued that these meetings were in line with Obama's policy.[22]
In a 2012 interview for the news portal Slon.ru, McFaul described himself as "specialist on democracy, anti-dictator movements, revolutions".[23]
Reaction to the visit was mixed: then president Dmitry Medvedev, in his public comments at Moscow State University, largely exonerated McFaul by saying that meeting with opposition figures was a routine occurrence, although he warned the new U.S. ambassador that he was on Russian soil and should respect Russian political sensibilities.[25] The incident sparked a highly negative reaction in the state-controlled Russian media, which accused him of conspiring with the opposition, but was appreciated by activists and social media users.[21]
McFaul announced his resignation as ambassador to Russia on February 4, 2014, effective after the Sochi Olympics.[26]John F. Tefft was confirmed as the next ambassador to Russia.[27]
McFaul returned to Stanford as a professor of political science. He also became a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He continued to be involved in geopolitics.[28] In October 2014, he stated that he believed the Russians continued to bug his and his wife's cell phones in the United States.[29] In 2014 he was placed on the Kremlin's sanction list of people who are not allowed to enter Russia.[21][30]
Russian request for an interrogation
On July 17, 2018, the Prosecutor General of Russia announced that it was seeking to question McFaul, amongst other Americans, in relation to its investigation of allegations made against Bill Browder.[31][32] This followed a request Vladimir Putin made to President Donald Trump during the summit in Helsinki. In a White House news conference two days later, Press SecretarySarah Huckabee Sanders said Trump described Putin's suggestion as an "interesting idea" and Trump "wants to work with his team and determine if there is any validity that would be helpful to the process".[33][34]
On July 19, shortly before the Senate was to vote on a resolution opposing the idea, Sanders stated that Trump "disagreed" with the Putin proposal.[35] The Senate approved the non-binding "sense of the Senate" resolution on a 98–0 vote; it stated that no current or former diplomat or other government employee should be made available to the Russians for interrogation.[36]
McFaul debated the Russian invasion with John Mearsheimer in May 2022. McFaul has taken a position on the Russian invasion of Ukraine identifying Putin as a culprit in conducting the invasion of Ukraine against the position of Mearsheimer that Putin is pursuing a realist geopolitical plan to secure Russian national interests in the presence of perceived threats from an expanding NATO.[38]
In an interview with Lex Fridman, Mearsheimer states that McFaul, as ambassador, told Putin "that [he] didn't have to worry about NATO expansion because the United States was a benign hegemon. And I asked Mike what Putin's response was to that. Mike said that Putin didn't believe" in the benignity of US hegemony. Mearsheimer goes on to relate that "what Mike thinks or any American thinks doesn't matter. What matters is what Putin thinks."[39]
Books
As of 2011,[update] McFaul was the author of over twenty books,[16] among which are:
In July 2019, McFaul wrote that Communist Party of China's officials "champion the advantages of their system—an ability to undertake massive infrastructure projects, the capacity to manage income inequalities and a commitment to harmony in government and society. In contrast, polarized U.S. politics in the Trump era seem to impede any major initiative, be it infrastructure development or addressing income inequality."[42]
Recognition
Coit D. Blacker called McFaul "the leading scholar of his generation, maybe the leading scholar, on post-Communist Russia" and a Stanford news release said his knowledge of Russia "was an important resource to politicians. He advised President George W. Bush on his dealings with Russian President Vladimir Putin."[15][43]
Personal life
McFaul and his wife, Donna Norton, married in 1993 and have two children.[44]
↑ "Today's Senate Floor Log". December 17, 2011. Archived from the original on December 27, 2011. Retrieved May 22, 2012. The source contains a misprint, "McFail" for "McFaul".
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who is the fourth president of Russia, serving since 2012 and previously as the second president from 2000 to 2008. Putin also served as prime minister from 1999 to 2000 and again from 2008 to 2012. He is the longest-serving Russian or Soviet leader since Joseph Stalin.
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John Joseph Mearsheimer is an American political scientist and international relations scholar. He is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago.
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Herbert Raymond McMaster is a retired United States Army lieutenant general who served as the 25th United States National Security Advisor from 2017 to 2018. He is also known for his roles in the Gulf War, Operation Enduring Freedom, and Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The United States and Russia maintain one of the most important, critical, and strategic foreign relations in the world. Both nations have shared interests in nuclear safety and security, nonproliferation, counterterrorism, and space exploration. Due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, relations became very tense after the United States imposed sanctions against Russia. Russia placed the United States on a list of "unfriendly countries".
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This is a timeline of events related to Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.
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This is a chronology of significant events in 2016 and 2017 related to the many suspicious links between Trump associates and Russian officials and spies during the Trump presidential transition and the Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. Following the timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections before and after July 2016, this article begins on November 8 and ends with Donald Trump and Mike Pence being sworn into office on January 20, 2017. The investigations continued in the first and second halves of 2017, the first and second halves of 2018, the first and second halves of 2019, 2020, and 2021.
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