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Sherman is the first woman to serve in her current role, in
which she has headed up the Biden administration's diplomacy
with China and led unsuccessful talks with Russia to avert
Moscow's February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken credited Sherman with breaking
barriers for women and working on "some of the toughest foreign
policy challenges of our time."
"Our nation is safer and more secure, and our partnerships more
robust, due to her leadership," Blinken said in a statement.
In a note to State Department staff announcing her retirement,
Sherman said her latest stint in government starting in 2021 was
marked by shifting geopolitical tides, citing the U.S.
withdrawal from Afghanistan, rising competition with China and
the war in Ukraine.
"(N)othing lent itself to straightforward answers," Sherman
wrote in the note seen by Reuters.
In January 2022, as Russian forces massed near Ukraine's
borders, Sherman was dispatched to meet Russian Deputy Foreign
Minister Sergei Ryabkov in Geneva, but the talks broke down,
with Moscow's envoy pressing demands on European security that
Washington had already dismissed as not viable.
“We knew that we were going to be off to the races,” Sherman
said of the talks in a New York Times interview ahead of her
retirement announcement.
(Reporting by Simon Lewis and Rami Ayyub; Writing by Katharine
Jackson, Editing by William Maclean)
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