On December 21, the US Senate voted 93 to 2 in support of President Biden’s nomination of career diplomat Lynn Tracy as Washington’s next ambassador to Russia.
Tracy, who served as the US Ambassador to Armenia since 2019 prior to her appointment, is an expert on post-Soviet countries and Central and South Asia. She worked in Moscow in 1987 as an ordinary employee of the US diplomatic mission, and from 2014 to 2017 she was US Deputy Ambassador to Russia John Tefft.
Before being sworn in as ambassador to Yerevan in 2019, Tracy served as a senior adviser for Russia at the State Department’s Office of European and Eurasian Affairs. She is fluent in Russian and will be the first woman in this position. Former US ambassador to Russia John Sullivan resigned on September 4 for family reasons.
Tracy has previously said that he intends to make his “commitment to supporting and defending Ukraine” a priority of his work in Moscow and will work hard to help free detained US citizens Paul Whelan and Mark Vogel.
“She really wants to join us?” said Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, adding that Tracy must show that she is ready to work constructively to prevent “irreparable damage to relations with our country.”
