  The Gurarij operator space $\mathbb{NG}$ introduced by Oikhberg is the unique
separable $1$-exact operator space that is approximately injective in the
category of $1$-exact operator spaces and completely isometric linear maps. We
prove that a separable operator space $X$ is nuclear if and only if there exist
a linear complete isometry $\varphi :X\rightarrow \mathbb{NG}$ and a completely
contractive projection from $\mathbb{NG}$ onto the range of $\varphi $. This
can be seen as the operator space analog of Kirchberg's nuclear embedding
theorem. We also establish the natural operator system analog of Kirchberg's
nuclear embedding theorem involving the Gurarij operator system $\mathbb{GS}$.
