Hillarious John Tefft appointment as US Ambassador to Russia

NEW US AMBASSADOR TO RUSSIA John F. Tefft ... is a career U.S. Foreign Service Officer since 1972. He was confirmed as the United States Ambassador to Russia on July 31, 2014. He has previously served as the United States' ambassador to Ukraine, Georgia, and Lithuania, as well as chargé d'affaires [diplomat in charge of matters] of the Embassy of the United States in Moscow, Russia. He joined the United States Foreign Service in 1972 and has served in Jerusalem, Budapest, Rome, Moscow, Vilnius and Tbilisi. 2009 President Viktor Yushchenko accepted Teffts credentials of Ambassador .... Tefft delivered his speech in Ukrainian. 2013 President Obama nominated Geoffrey R. Pyatt to succeed Tefft as Ambassador of the United States to Ukraine. 2014 President Obama nominated Tefft as the United States Ambassador to Russia in Moscow, after receiving Russia's approval. [Wikipedia]

Newsweek Article (May 2014) Ambassador Tefft Would Upset Russia, and That's the Point By Lynnley Browning / May 14, 2014 6:23 AM EDT When the man most likely to be America’s next ambassador to Russia, John Tefft, moves into the stately Spaso House embassy in Moscow, he will dwell there amid the iciest relations between the Kremlin and Washington since the dark days of the Iron Curtain. ... In early April, the burly Tefft made a behind-the-scenes round of analysts in Moscow to gauge the Kremlin’s increasingly anti-American mood, according to private sector sources with whom he met. Currently the executive director of the Rand Business Leaders Forum, a clubby lobbying group focused on strategic issues involving Russia, the U.S. and Europe, Tefft declined to speak with a reporter, citing the diplomatic approval process now in process. A White House spokeswoman also declined to comment. ... Tefft’s imminent appointment comes after years of American neglect of Russia as a force to contend with. President Barack Obama’s move in 2009 to push a reset button aimed at gaining cooperation from the Kremlin on strategic issues such as Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and, later, Syria, got off to a famously bad start when then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton presented Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, still in his job under Putin, with a red button that said not “reset” but peregruzka (“overload”). ... Tefft is widely regarded as a “traditional” diplomat who operates with old-school, low-key professionalism, “a huge asset in Moscow, and perhaps the only style that can work in this situation,” says the Carnegie Moscow Center’s Trenin. McFaul, the most recent ambassador to Russia—known for his prolific Twitter feed of Russia news and tidbits, from a broken finger sustained while shooting hoops to support of hot-button Kremlin issues like gay rights and meetings with Russian opposition figures—simply pissed off the Kremlin. ... (An official State Department Twitter feed packed with anti-Kremlin tweets is unlikely to help Tefft. In one zinger, on April 24, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki tweeted, “The world stands #UnitedforUkraine. Let’s hope that the #Kremlin & @mfa_russia”—Russia’s Foreign Affairs Ministry—“will live by the promise of hashtag.”) Amid the “hashtag diplomacy,” the Kremlin tightened control over the online activities of Russian pundits and activists on May 5. Tefft knows how to push some of the right emotional buttons. In a 2013 exit interview in his post as ambassador to Ukraine with the Ukrainian newspaper The Day, he said that if he were a Ukrainian reading the 19th century poetry of Taras Shevchenko, the nation’s Shakespeare, “I’d cry every time” because “it just captures the essence of what it means to be Ukrainian.” “Diplomacy certainly still does matter to Putin, but he just happens to have different terms of reference to the West and a disrespect for many of the niceties,” Mark Galeotti, a Russia specialist at New York University who is teaching at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, tells Newsweek. “But this means that the next U.S. ambassador’s character, remit and approach will be crucial. Putin seems to have come to believe that the USA is hypocritical and weak-willed.” Extracts only ... Full @ Source - Newsweek - May 2014 - here.

COMMENT

This is hilarious.
USA's sending over a guy who was all misty-eyed and rallying Ukraine nationalism.
And the dude's been hanging at some arm of Rand Corporation.

I'm new to watching politics, but this strikes me as hilarious and pointless.

Tefft will have zero influence.

But that's probably the case for all ambassadors for all I know.  Not sure how it works.

Just strikes me as the most improbable dude to send.