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It’s not every day that a former U.S. ambassador publicly unloads on a head of state, but John Koenig, who served as the U.S. Ambassador to Cyprus from 2012 to 2015, has done just that. In a candid personal essay, Koenig describes his rocky relationship with President Nicos Anastasiades, calling him a "fraud" and a "blowhard," and reveals how a political misstep by Anastasiades ultimately ended his own diplomatic career in Cyprus.
Koenig recounts how tensions between them came to a head in early 2015, when Anastasiades decided to visit Moscow and meet with President Vladimir Putin. The visit openly defied a European Union embargo on high-level contact with Russia, which had been imposed following the annexation of Crimea. Koenig strongly lobbied Anastasiades to cancel the trip, warning of the consequences. However, Anastasiades pressed ahead, driven, according to Koenig, by Cyprus's heavy financial dependence on Russian money flowing into the island’s banking sector.
The timing couldn’t have been worse. During Anastasiades’ visit, Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was assassinated just outside the Kremlin walls. Back in Nicosia, Koenig, frustrated and disillusioned, took to Twitter, posting a sharp comment that essentially told Cyprus to "choose your friends wisely." The tweet sparked a furious backlash. Russian-linked trolls amplified it online, and Anastasiades went on national television to personally denounce the U.S. ambassador. From that moment, Koenig says, his days in Cyprus were numbered. Although he refused to leave under pressure, he made arrangements to exit as soon as it was diplomatically possible, departing by July 2015.
Koenig is unsparing in his assessment of Anastasiades, describing their working relationship as difficult from the start and accusing the Cypriot leader of prioritizing financial ties over ethical foreign policy decisions. He reflects bitterly on the false display of unity captured in official photographs from the U.S. Embassy’s Independence Day reception in June 2015, calling the smiles “a lie” masking deep mutual animosity.
Beyond his Cyprus experience, Koenig uses the essay to sound an alarm about the broader state of U.S. diplomacy under the current Trump 2.0 administration. He questions how career diplomats can continue to serve a government he sees as predatory, corrupt, and destructive to both American values and global institutions. He points to examples such as political suppression, the undermining of alliances, and human rights abuses, urging senior Foreign Service officers to examine their consciences and consider whether remaining in service compromises their integrity.
Koenig, who resigned from the Foreign Service in 2015, admits he never faced the personal choice of serving under Trump the first time around but believes he would have resigned in protest. Drawing a parallel to his decision to leave over Iraq-related issues during the Bush era, he says that maintaining personal integrity sometimes requires stepping away, even at great personal cost.
The former ambassador concludes with a warning: just as he was right, in his view, about Anastasiades, he believes history will judge those who stand idly by while democracy and diplomacy are undermined.
*Read the intriguing essay, entitled "Personal Integrity" here.
