Sullivan’s departure was abrupt, and there had been no earlier public indication that his retirement was imminent. A State Department official and a Biden administration official, who both spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, confirmed that Sullivan’s retirement had been expected.
“Ambassador Sullivan’s departure is planned and part of a normal diplomatic rotation,” the State Department official said. “He has served a full tenure as U.S. ambassador to Russia, managing one of the most critical bilateral relationships in the world during unprecedented times.
“The U.S. will continue to condemn unequivocally the Kremlin’s aggressive war against Ukraine and remain steadfast in our commitment to supporting Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” the official added.
The White House official said Sullivan’s departure had been expected — given that ambassadors to Russia typically serve for about three years — but was accelerated due to a family issue.
On Saturday, in his final official event as ambassador, Sullivan attended the Moscow funeral of Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, whom he described as “a statesman who changed the world through his vision of peaceful coexistence and transformation in his country and the rest of the world.”
Elizabeth Rood, the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, will assume duties as chargé d’affaires there until Sullivan’s successor arrives, the embassy said Sunday. Last month, Rood was nominated to be the U.S. ambassador to Turkmenistan and is awaiting Senate confirmation to that post.
Sullivan — a seasoned government official — was appointed U.S. ambassador to Russia by President Donald Trump in December 2019 and served for more than 2½ years; President Biden asked him to stay on, given the tense relationship with Russia and the difficulty of moving ambassadorial nominations through the U.S. Senate. It would take many months, and in some cases well over a year, for many of Biden’s nominees to get into place.
Sullivan arrived in Russia in January 2020, a year before the end of Trump’s term in office, during a time when relations between the United States and Russia were already tense.
Staffing at the embassy in Moscow was already thin after a series of diplomatic expulsions, and the situation was exacerbated after Russia in 2021 prohibited the United States from retaining, hiring or contracting Russian or third-country staff, forcing the embassy to let go of 182 local employees and dozens of contractors.
“These unfortunate measures will severely impact the U.S. mission to Russia’s operations, potentially including the safety of our personnel as well as our ability to engage in diplomacy with the Russian government,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement then.
During Sullivan’s tenure, relations between the United States and Russia — and between Russia and most of the Western world — deteriorated to their worst point at least since the end of the Cold War. Beginning last year, the United States had warned for months that Russia was planning to invade its neighbor, but Putin was undeterred and warned of “consequences greater than any you have faced in history” should other countries interfere.
“The halls and offices of the embassy are mostly quiet today, unfortunately,” Sullivan told Politico in…
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