Outspoken U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul to leave Russia after only two years

[pampango]

1. U.S. ambassador in Moscow uses social media to bypass official line

What’s a U.S. ambassador to do when he wants to get his message out in a country that enjoys making America look bad, has little patience for Western values and tightly controls the media? Call him @McFaul, the tweeting ambassador.

For Ambassador Michael McFaul, the unfiltered communication offered by social media means he can tweet U.S. policy, blog it and post it on Facebook, an alternative to the mostly hostile traditional media here. While Russian Internet use is widespread, the majority of people still get their news from television, so McFaul is unlikely to win the nation’s hearts and minds tweet by tweet. But his use of social media gets him buzz — and a direct line to a new audience.

McFaul tweets, he said in an interview, because Hillary Rodham Clinton, the former U.S. secretary of state who sent him to Moscow two years ago, told him to.

McFaul, who is 50 and a proud native of Montana, was not a career diplomat. He was a Stanford University political science professor and Russia expert who wrote extensively about democracy-building efforts in the region. He was a member of the National Security Council, serving as President Obama’s Russia adviser, before becoming ambassador.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/moscow-ambassador-tweets-us-policy/2014/01/11/ac1fefea-7568-11e3-8b3f-b1666705ca3b_story.html

It will be interesting to read a fuller account of his departure. I would imagine that being a 'democracy-builder' and seeking a 'direct line to a new audience' can't have gone over too well with Vlad.