Michael Anthony McFaul (born October 1, 1963)[1] is an American academic and diplomat who served as the United States ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014.

Born in Glasgow, Montana, McFaul was raised in Butte and Bozeman, where his father worked as a musician and music teacher.

[13][14] In 1994, McFaul and one-time close friend and colleague Sergey Markov helped found the Moscow Carnegie Center.

[8] McFaul's past engagement with Russian political figures included a denunciation of him in 1994 by Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of the Liberal Democratic Party and a member of the State Duma (the Russian parliament),[15] and a subsequent shooting incident in which a shot was fired into McFaul's office window in Moscow.

[7] A Hoover Institution Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow, McFaul is a Democrat who was the architect of U.S. President Barack Obama's policy on Russia.

[16] In 2009, McFaul joined the Barack Obama administration as a senior adviser in Washington, D.C., where he was the architect of the so-called "Russian reset" policy.

The visitors to McFaul included Yevgeniya Chirikova (environment activist), Boris Nemtsov (leader of the People's Freedom Party at the time; assassinated in 2015), Lev Ponomarev (human rights activist), Sergey Mitrokhin (leader of Yabloko party), Oksana Dmitriyeva (deputy head of A Just Russia), Lilia Shibanova (head of the GOLOS Association elections monitor group).

[21][30] 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.

[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.

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.

[40] After the 2016 presidential election, he became a regular commentator on MSNBC and social media, and was frequently critical of the policies and actions of President Donald Trump with regard to Russia.

[41] 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.