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Marie Yovanovitch
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Marie Yovanovitch
Fmr. U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine
Marie Yovanovitch served as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine from 2016 to 2019. She has also served as an ambassador to the Republic of Armenia and the Kyrgyz Republic. Yovanovitch is currently a senior fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
The following interview was conducted by the Kirk Documentary Group’s Michael Wiser for FRONTLINE on Sept. 28, 2022. It has been edited for clarity and length.
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Putin’s 2021 Invasion of Ukraine
At the end of 2021, President Joe Biden is briefed that Russia’s plans for attacking Ukraine are serious for a full-scale invasion.What is at stake at that moment?What is on the line in this invasion of Ukraine by Russia?How big a moment is that?
I think it’s a pretty big moment because it’s not only the invasion of a sovereign country on Russia’s border, without any provocation—and I should say re-invasion, right, because of course the war had been going on since 2014, but obviously this was on a much larger scale.And frankly, if Russia is allowed to get away with this, if Russia stomps all over Ukraine and takes it over, then it affects the entire international order that we’ve been sort of living under since World War II.And it makes for a — if Putin and his ilk are able to set the rules for how countries cooperate or don’t, it’s a might-makes-right kind of world, and smaller countries are just going to have to put up.
And even though the United States is a larger country, that makes for a less secure world all the way around, and less secure for more Americans, a less prosperous world—you can imagine what it does to supply chains—and certainly a less free world.
So the stakes, I think, were pretty high, and you can see how the administration, the Biden administration, responded.It responded by bringing together allies and partners in those months leading up to the war.There was a plan for sanctions; there was a plan for military assistance.And once the war started in February of ’22, clearly that plan was ramped up beyond anything any of us could have imagined, I think, in 2021.
And yeah, so I think the stakes were pretty high, and they continue to be very high.
The plans, as you said, were very explicit; the warnings were very explicit.
Yes.And I should have said that.The release of intel was amazing.
And the president was talking to Putin.There were public statements that were being made.There was a rallying of allies.And yet Putin is not deterred.Does he not believe the threat had credibility at that point?Why is Biden unable to deter Putin in that moment?
Well, and I should say Biden is certainly the leader of kind of the Western coalition, for lack of a better word, many other leaders tried as well.I think that Putin had a plan.I think he wanted to implement it.He had made certain assessments—that’s quite clear—that he had a big, powerful army, military; that it would just take a couple days to take Kyiv and beyond; that Western unity would not hold; and that the Ukrainians aren’t really a real people.They’re not a real country; they have a teeny, little military compared to Russia’s, and they wouldn’t fight.And if they did fight, it would not be effective.
And it turned out that all of those assessments were incorrect.
He announces the war, which he calls a “special military operation,” in February.He gives a speech, and one of the things that’s remarkable about the speech, which is known for the “empire of lies” quote, is a lot of the beginning of the speech, the first third of the speech is actually about the United States and about the West and about their domination.Is it surprising to you as somebody who knows Putin to hear that he’s about to invade Ukraine, and yet he’s starting off his speech talking about the United States?
Yeah.And he’s continuing to do that, right?I mean, the speech that he gave at the beginning of the U.N. General Assembly, in Moscow, to the Russian people also talks about the West and how the West is at war with us.That’s not an exact quote, but that’s certainly the sense.
I think that it’s hard for me to know to what extent Putin really believes this or to what extent he has just convinced himself that this is what he needs to share with his cohort, with the Russian people to justify the steps that he has taken over time, and most recently this attack on Ukraine.
But this theme, that the West is aggressive against Russia, that NATO is a threat to Russia, has been a predominant one for decades actually.
And I would also say that I don’t think, again, one of the miscalculations that Putin made was that Ukraine’s not a real country.And so I think Russia sees Ukraine sort of doing America’s bidding, that Ukraine is somehow like a pawn of the United States and we’re telling them what to do.As somebody who’s a former ambassador to Ukraine, I can tell you it’s not quite like that.But I do believe that that is what Putin believes.
So to the extent that the Ukrainians fight back, I think Putin sees that as the West.And of course, since the West has been helping Ukraine, through sanctions, with military assistance, economic assistance, that adds fuel to the fire, so to speak, for that belief.
Putin’s Road to Invasion
Do you think he’s been building to this moment for a while?
I do.I think that he’s just been waiting.I mean, it’s—the pattern of his presidency, whether it’s Chechnya, whether it’s Georgia in 2008, whether it’s Ukraine in 2014-2015, and now this, I think that Putin very much wants to reestablish the former Russian Empire, and he’s willing to wait.I mean, I think he believes, and I think he still believes, that the West is going to lose interest; that we’re going to turn away to the next shiny object that is out there, and we are not going to stay the course on Ukraine, and then he can continue on.And he’s also told us he has his sights on other countries as well.
So he, in some ways, you can’t trust what he says because he lies.In other ways, he tells us exactly who he is and what his plans are.And so differentiating between the two can sometimes be a real trick.
I would like to go back to what you said about the West is the “empire of lies.”It’s really interesting that Putin would say that before the war because here’s the United States and Britain putting out intelligence that Russia has this aim of invading Ukraine, which is—I’ve never seen anything like it.It’s unprecedented in my experience.And it turns out that all the intelligence that was shared actually turned out to be true, right?And what was Putin saying during that time?He was saying, “We’re never going to invade; it’s all made-up lies.”
And so exactly where is the empire of lies?
So let’s go back to how we got here, because one of the things that Putin said in that speech in February 24 of 2022 is that “We lost confidence for one moment, and it was enough to disrupt the balance of forces in the world.”He’s talking about the collapse of the Soviet Union and presumably about Gorbachev and Yeltsin.How do you understand how Putin saw the collapse of the Soviet Union and how it influenced who he is today?
I don’t have any special knowledge, but I mean, I think here we should take him at his word when he said that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest tragedy of the previous century.I mean, I think he did believe that.I mean, you can only imagine what it must have been like as a young KGB officer in East Germany, and your entire—your country disappears, or is in the process of disappearing.You’re there on the front lines.And the Communist Party obviously will lose its raison d’être.And so it must have been devastating.
I mean, sometimes it’s helpful to try to put one’s self in somebody else’s shoes, and I think that must have been a severe blow.Now, what we see is that he pretty quickly adjusts and moves on to become the deputy mayor of Leningrad/St. Petersburg, and he’s the guy, given his background, who manages international relations.Now it’s not the capital, but it’s a big, big city, and there’s lots of businesses, lots of foreigners from foreign governments who want to go to Petersburg, and he’s the one who’s managing all of that.
And he’s, in the course of that, that’s the beginning of his accumulation of the great wealth that he allegedly has.
What do you think that the—because we’re going to talk in particular about Ukraine but also about Georgia.What does it seem like or what does he say, how he views the loss of what they call the “near abroad”?
Well, I think just the term, the near abroad, it’s not abroad, right?Britain is abroad; France is abroad.But the Russians in this new configuration can’t even bring themselves to call the other former republics as being completely abroad.They’re the near abroad.
And I think in the very beginning there was a sense that Moscow would still call all the shots, that countries would look to Russia for everything, and there was an attempt to create the Commonwealth of Independent States; that never really amounted to much.But we didn’t know what that was going to be, and I think there was great hopes in Moscow that it would be some new version of the former Soviet Union.
Do you think that Putin at that point saw the United States as a strategic threat or a strategic enemy?I mean... we’ve talked to people who said the U.S. wasn’t the one making the Soviet Union fall apart.But do you think that’s how he thought?
I think it’s hard to know, and that was certainly how he was brought up, right, on the propaganda films of the Soviet Union which he has written were hugely influential on him as a young boy and determined his first choice of profession, one that he frankly probably has never really left, at least in terms of his heart.
But I do think that there was probably a progression.I think that as he—it’s quite clear that he did not approve of many of the Gaidar/Yeltsin policies in the very, very early ’90s to try to bring shock therapy to Russia, to get the economy going on a market basis.And he—I think he saw it as a humiliation, where Russia was accepting assistance from the West, not just the United States but other countries as well.The reason for that was Russia was requesting assistance; it’s not like we forced this on Russia.And we provided our best assistance.And these were plans that came together with the Russian government and other actors.
I think, though, that he felt that the effect on the Russian people was very difficult, and I think anybody who was there in the early ’90s, and I am one of those people, it was a really rough time because you have this transition, but all the laws and the regulations to protect people and to make sure that things happen in not just a legal, a technically legal way, but a fair way were not in place.
And so kind of the strong and the ruthless were able to benefit greatly, and little babushki on pensions were sometimes literally left on the street, and that is something that was—it was a terrible thing, and I believe that made a really profound impact on everybody, including probably Putin.
I would note, though, that he was in the cohort of the strong and the ruthless.He was an insider, so he could make those deals and profit personally from them.And I mean, what we’ve seen over time, not immediately but over time, is the rise of the KGB state, where the security agencies not only became strong politically; they became very strong economically, too, and their leadership was very strong, handsomely benefited from that period of time.
In those early years of Putin, it seems like we’re trying to figure out who Putin is, whether he’s a—is he a reformer?Is he the former KGB agent?There’s the famous moment when George W. Bush says he looks into his eyes and he sees his soul.In that early period, what did Americans understand about him?What did President Bush understand?Were you surprised that you would hear something like that from President Bush?
Well, I was surprised by that particular quote.I think probably most people were.But I think there was a hope.Yeltsin had been a good partner for the United States.He, I think, wanted genuinely to bring his country to democracy, to market economy, because that was good for Russia.We thought that was good for the United States as well.And I think Yeltsin wanted to be a partner to the West.
Now, he was a deeply flawed man, as many presidents are, and he was obviously an alcoholic and made many mistakes along the way.1And I think that somebody like Putin and those around him saw the relationship with the West and particularly with the United States as somehow humiliating to Russia.What we saw as an attempt to build a partnership, I think, I do believe that Putin saw it as something else, that Russia was the junior partner.
But what we were trying to do in the 1990s was to bring Russia into the fold of the international community.So Clinton invited Russia to become a G-8 member.The Russian economy was not the eighth-largest economy in the world, but in our attempt to bring Russia in and help Russia manage its own transition, but also manage its relations overseas, we wanted to put Russia at the table so that Russia would understand the benefits of the rules-based international order, that Russia would massively benefit from this as well.
And in the 1990s, it seemed like that was moving forward in a positive way.NATO established a special NATO Russia Council.Putin himself, when he became president, participated in that several times, and he certainly participated in the G-8 for many, many, many years.
But I think that once Putin came to power, his old instincts, shall we say, kind of kicked in.And while initially in the early years we were very hopeful that we would have a good partner in Putin, that Russia would continue at the, you know, to work in the family of nations, the first thing he did was to consolidate his own power—going after the oligarchs, going after the press, etc., etc.And then that bled over into international relations.
And I think that what we do sometimes is we—foreign policy is essentially a hopeful business because you have to keep on hoping and working constructively to make those hopes a reality.And that’s what we were doing with an outstretched hand to Russia over that time, including many years of the Putin presidency.Unfortunately, Putin did not want to take that outstretched hand.
The West as a Threat to Russia
… As the color revolutions happen, 2003-2004 period, is that a turning point in his understanding of the West or his attitude towards America?
I don’t know if it’s a turning point.It might be a turning point; it might also be a further consolidation of his views that we are up to no good in what they call and you just called the near abroad.This is Russia’s backyard; Russia believes in spheres of influence.And so Putin found it profoundly threatening that in Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, there would be what came to be known as color revolutions, because if democracy can prevail in countries geographically and in some instances historically close to Russia, then the question arises, well, maybe it can in Russia as well.
And there’s also a personal element for Putin, I believe, where he sees the footage of leaders being run out of their country.And of course he takes in some of those leaders.And I think he finds it not only politically, for Russia, threatening, but personally. …
Now he also talks about it in terms of Russian Empire and in terms of Russia’s sphere of influence and making Russia great again.Is that part of it, too, that if these places have sided with the West, that his hopes of rebuilding Russian greatness were also in threat?
Yeah, I’m sure that’s true.And I should just, going back to your previous question, I should just also add that because he doesn’t respect these countries and their people—certainly in the case of Ukraine, they’re not a distinct people; it’s not a distinct culture or history, according to Vladimir Putin—how is it that there are revolutions there?It must be because the West is putting those countries up to it, when in fact, nothing could be further from the truth.
We were catching up to events just like everybody else was, because these were movements that were coming from the ground up.And even, if you talk to the people in Kyrgyzstan and Georgia and Ukraine, they didn’t know they were going to be successful until all of a sudden there was a tipping point, and they were.
So yeah, I think it’s a mixture of things, as you point out.
By the time we get to 2007 and that speech in Munich, he sounds a lot like he sounds in 2022 when he’s talking about the West and the “empire of lies.”And you write in your book, “We did not fully understand Putin’s words and the threat they turned out to be.”What did you mean?
Well, I think it’s ironic that Putin was looking at the United States and, perhaps to a greater extent, to the West as somehow so focused on Russia and that we were a threat to Russia that he would make a speech like he did at Munich, because actually, at least from my perspective, in 2001, after 9/11, we completely dropped the ball on Russia.We were completely focused on terrorism.It’s hard to remember now, but we weren’t talking about if there would be another attack on the homeland; we were talking about when.
And so all resources flowed to the war on terror.First there was Afghanistan; then there was Iraq; there’s other areas that we were focused on as possible terrorist threats to the United States and our partners and allies.So that’s where everything was focused.
So I think from our point of view, there was almost—I mean, many people I think understood what Putin was saying, but I think a lot of other people were, like, bemused almost because it was so far from the truth, and all you needed to do was kind of assess where we were putting our attention and our resources.
So it wasn’t completely taken seriously.And like I said, we were completely focused on something else.There wasn’t the bandwidth to start regrouping.And it didn’t appear, at least in 2007, that there was a need for that.
… When the invasion of Georgia happens, the end of the Bush administration, what’s the message that’s being sent by Vladimir Putin at that point?
Well, I think, again, “This is my neighborhood, and I’m going to do what I want to here.”Saakashvili fell into a trap, and it became clear that we were not—while we provided lots and lots of economic assistance after the war, we were not going to intervene militarily.And I think Putin had probably made that assessment, and he was correct in that assessment.
It’s hard to know what would have happened if the Bush administration had continued for another two or three years, because what happened, as you know, is that Obama won the presidency, and then there was the “reset.”And that’s not so unusual.I think every administration comes in wanting to reset relationships, not just with Russia, but with other countries that have been, shall we say, challenges or problematical.And the old guys, they didn’t get it, right? But we are, because again — foreign policy — we are an optimistic group; that we’re going to be able to do this.The timing is better; the personalities are different, whatever.We’re going to do it through sheer dint of willpower.
And so the Obama administration came in, and despite I think some reservations on the part of pretty prominent people, they moved forward with the reset.And so … the invasion of a sovereign nation of Georgia was kind of swept under the rug.And I was surprised to find out that even the Bush administration had not implemented sanctions against Russia because of Georgia.They didn’t—there was some tsk-tsking and stuff like that—and of course, it was at the very end of the administration, but there wasn’t really any penalty for Russia’s invasion of Georgia.
And then there was a new administration, and we tried to start all over again.
Putin and the Obama Administration
… I hadn’t thought about that, that that invasion happened really right at the end of Bush, and that when Obama, if he’s going to do the reset, he’s not going to—he can’t put Georgia at the top of the agenda.
And so what we did is we gave Georgia massive economic assistance, massive, and continued to help Georgia with its democratic and economic transitions.And for a while that worked.I mean, clearly Georgia has a number of challenges right now.
But when you say there were reservations about the reset, what were the reservations?
Well, I think the reservations are what we’ve been talking about: that Russia is an aggressive country—exhibit one was Georgia—but that the clamping down, not to say repression of Russian society that was evident even in 2008, and so that perhaps it shouldn’t be business as usual with this big, flashy Hillary Clinton and Sergey Lavrov with the reset button.Which turns out it was the “overload” button.We got the Russian word wrong, but maybe we got it more right than we realized.
And Putin must have taken something from that, not just from the Obama administration but from both, from what the fallout was or lack thereof of Georgia.
Yeah, I think that with regard to Georgia, I think what he took away from that is that, yes, there’s going to be some complaints, but that the West doesn’t care as much about Georgia and other countries in that part of the world as the rhetoric might indicate; that he can weather the criticism.And that’s what he did.He’s a patient man.I mean, he’ll wait years to continue to do what he wants to do.
And I should also say, since I’m sort of implicitly criticizing the reset here, that after the reset, there were some really positive things that happened in the U.S.-Russia relationship that were important to our national security.And so I don’t want to gloss over that.The thing about foreign policy, the thing about national security, is it’s never perfect, and you have to kind of weigh the balance on how you want to move forward.
But going back to your question about what he took from Georgia, I think he thought, “Well, I can get away with this.”And so then, with Ukraine in 2014, I think it was that same calculation.And the guy who calls us the empire of lies, you know, throughout—it took him about a year to admit that the little green men in Crimea were Russian soldiers.
That sort of happened so quick, and then poof, all of a sudden Crimea was annexed illegally by the Russians.And then you saw what happened in the east, in the Donbas, with this low-level war.And we did apply sanctions, and we did apply a lot of political pressure, and we kicked Putin out of the G-8.And there was some pain in the Russian economy, but mostly I think Putin felt that he could weather that storm.And that again, while we did provide military assistance, we were also very clear with the Ukrainians that they should not provoke Russia, which you hear in some circles today as well.
And from my point of view, who’s provoking who here?Russia invaded Ukraine.If that isn’t the biggest provocation ever, I don’t know what is.And countries have the right to do—to defend themselves and to retain their sovereign territory.
When you say they were being told not to provoke Russia, is that when you were there, at the end of the Obama administration?Is it that period that you’re talking about?
That’s the only period I kind of really want to talk about because I only know that.But yeah, I think we were telling the Ukrainians to be very, very careful.
I want to talk about that in a little bit more detail, but one thing I want to ask you about first was, there’s famous comments from President Obama about Russia being a regional power.He talks to Mitt Romney, and he says, “The 1980s called, and they want their foreign policy back.”What was the message that Obama was sending?Was he wrong on that?How was that being perceived by President Putin?
Well, I think what we know about President Putin is that he’s a proud man who sees Russia as a great nation and wants to expand it into the great empire that it once was.And I think those remarks were seen as belittling Russia, and I don’t think President Putin liked it at all.
Was it a mistake?There was a focus about, we’re going to shift to Asia, and we’re going to focus on—there’s lots going on, and there’s the Iran deal and other things.Was it a mistake to lose focus on Russia, if that’s what happened, at the highest levels of the White House?
So I would just note that when the Biden administration came in, there was also that same, “We’re going to focus on Asia.”And I think, you know, the United States is a great power.We are now, I think, at a time of international transition, and so the role of the United States is changing, as other countries—and I’m not only talking about Russia and China, but there are many countries that are clamoring for a seat at the table.
And so I think the role of the United States is changing.Bill Burns, who is now, of course, the head of the CIA, he calls it the U.S. becoming the pivotal power, I mean, maybe not the one superpower, but the power that kind of determines the direction that international affairs are going in.
And so as we make that transition, we are going to continue to need to be paying attention to all parts of the world.We need to have the depth to be able—whether it’s militarily, whether it’s diplomatically, whether it’s economically—to be able to deal with China, to be able to deal with Russia, to be able to deal with other countries.I mean, that is critically important.
And yeah, I mean, I would just say that we didn’t make that full transition in the Obama years, and hopefully we’re doing it now.
The Javelins Debate
The invasion of Crimea happens.The war in the east is starting.You become ambassador.There’s a debate inside the administration.I don’t know if it’s resolved by the time you’re involved with it or not—about do you send Javelins to Ukraine.We’ve heard that now-President Biden was on one side of the debate and President Obama made a decision on the other side.What was that debate about, and why was that important?
So I got to Ukraine in August of 2016, so that was at the very tail end of the Obama years.And it was no longer really an active discussion because the president had made his decision, and we were not going to be sending Javelins to Ukraine.
Now, I think he was– presidents get to have their own foreign policy, but I think he was in a real minority in terms of the national security leadership that this was the right way to go.So the issue was resurrected in the Trump years, and it took about a year for Trump to finally sign off on the first shipment of Javelins.And then they were delivered—so what would that be?—in 2018.
And were you supportive in this debate, starting in the Obama years, going into the Trump years, of providing weapons?
Yes.
What was the argument that you and others were making?
I thought it was important.By the time I became a participant in these discussions, Javelins had taken on this symbolic value far greater than their use in the field, if you can believe that, because when Javelins were first, so to speak, put on the table in 2014 and 2015 as something we could or should provide to the Ukrainians, it was a tank battle.So Javelins obviously are anti-tank missiles.So they would have been very helpful at that time.
By the time I got to Ukraine, it was a different kind of a battle.President Poroshenko, every time we met with him, would say, “Our greatest casualties are coming from snipers.”It was a sniper war.It was sort of– there were no longer Russian tanks advancing into Ukraine.So Javelins at that particular moment in time were perhaps not the most critical piece of equipment that we could send to the Ukrainians, but they had taken on the symbolic value of: Does the U.S. really have Ukraine’s back?
And so for that reason I supported them.I’m really glad that they got there because, as we have seen in 2022, they were hugely, hugely helpful, as have the additional supplies that we have sent.
What was Vice President Biden’s role in Ukraine?We’ve heard that he goes there a lot over the last two years of the Obama administration and is meeting —What is Joe Biden’s role?Is he taking charge of policy towards Ukraine?How involved is he?
He was very, very involved.And again, I can only speak personally from kind of the last four or five months of the administration, but he was the point person.He had—he was the one who was leading on policy efforts.
Now, President Obama was still in charge, as we’ve just discussed the Javelin decision.But there are many parts of our foreign policy that don’t reach the uppermost levels, or the uppermost level, and President Biden was the person who, I think, had been assigned the Ukraine file and was coordinating it on all the different levels—economic assistance, energy, security assistance, etc., etc.And he had very frequent calls with President Poroshenko to encourage him to move forward, and to move forward in a positive direction.
It must have really shaped the way he approaches it now because he knows people; he knows the area probably in a way that most presidents wouldn’t understand.
I think that’s true.And if you look at the people who are most involved in Ukraine policy today in this administration, they were also involved back in the day in the Obama administration as well.And so I think that has shaped how everybody, first and foremost the president but also other people, are responding.
Did he view it, did you view it at the time in the existential terms that people talk about now when they say this is about democracy, this is about authoritarianism, this is about the rule of law?Or was this really dealing with practical problems in Ukraine?Was there that type of existential talk?
No.At least I was not privy to those conversations if they took place.It seemed that Russia’s goals were more modest, shall we say, although still completely wrong and objectionable.So Russia took Crimea; Russia took parts of the Donbas.But it seemed to me that what Russia wanted was to create this instability in Ukraine.With the war going on in the east — so it didn’t often make U.S. headlines, but two or three people died every week, sometimes civilians, sometimes soldiers.That is a drain on a nation.They were the internally displaced people that we hear so much about now.Well, that was going on in Ukraine for all of those years as well, where communities just absorbed the IDPs [internally displaced persons].And Russia was mounting cyberattacks.There was all sorts of disinformation.There were assassinations of leadership in Kyiv — as well as in other places — [that were] very targeted.
And so I think all of that, plus a live, actual hot war in the middle of Europe, was destabilizing to Ukraine and made it more challenging for the leadership to accomplish its aspirations, like EU membership.And Poroshenko at least was in favor of NATO membership.At that time, most Ukrainians were not.Thanks to Vladimir Putin’s re-invasion of Ukraine, of course now all Ukrainians are in favor of both NATO and EU membership.
Putin and the Trump Administration
How profound was the change when Donald Trump was elected?You’re on the ground there.Could you sense a change in either policy or message or how America was perceived, especially vis-à-vis Russia?
So I think there was a lot of concern in Ukraine when Donald Trump was elected president in November of 2016 because of some of the comments he had made that Crimea is Russia.I think that made people nervous.Also his comments on foreign assistance generally, not with regard to Ukraine, because the U.S. was the single most important partner for Ukraine, not only in terms of our training and assistance program on the security side but also on the economic assistance side.And politically—I mean, we supported Ukraine in international fora and so forth, and so I think there was great concern in Ukraine that when Trump became president that he would change the policy.As it turned out, he never did officially change the policy.I mean, we had an interagency review, I mean, not at the presidential level, but, you know, by the Trump people in February, and basically they blessed the same policy that had—not that anybody presented it as such, but it was the same policy as during the Obama years.
And then later on, once President Trump made the decision about Javelins, I actually felt that our policy had been strengthened.
You’re watching — I mean, there’s policies going on at two levels.One is the actual policy of America, and then there’s another, which is, you must be watching, for example, Trump goes, right before he goes to Helsinki he goes to Brussels, and he dresses down Secretary General [Jens] Stoltenberg.He’s very critical of NATO.What are you thinking at a moment like that, especially his criticisms of NATO in a very public way?
It was shocking.It was shocking, and it was disruptive, and it was not helpful to treat our allies in that manner.As it happened, I was in Odessa at that time.We had a big, multi-nation exercise in the Black Sea, and so a lot of the brass from our military was there.And I actually watched the Helsinki press conference with Trump and Putin from my hotel room in Odessa after a long day of military exercises where it’s all about Ukraine, the United States and all the other partner nations working together on the security side.And then to watch that, it was—it was, again, it was shocking.And I was glad that we were able to say in Ukraine, “Look at what we’re doing.”What we’re doing is providing security assistance, and most recently we had the head of U.S. forces in Europe with us down in Odessa to kick off these exercises.That is what we are tangibly doing to provide support for Ukraine.
I don’t know how much you were privy to what President Trump was saying and how much of it was public and how much of it was in private.But he's describing Ukraine, certainly in his private conversations, as basically a totally corrupt country.He certainly doesn’t frame it in terms of the country’s struggling for democracy and for independence.What was the effect of how President Trump saw Ukraine, and were you perceiving that at the time?
Well, in June of 2018, so fairly early on in the Trump presidency, he made, or his people made, an arrangement to meet with Putin in the summer of 2018, and we of course had, for our part in Ukraine, had been pushing for a meeting with President Poroshenko, and I think when the Putin meeting got set in place, smart people in Washington decided that this would indeed be a very good idea, a little inoculation.
And in that meeting, Trump sort of came out and said towards the end of the meeting to Poroshenko that Ukraine was a very corrupt country.And I have to say, Poroshenko did a good job of defending Ukraine.
I mean, the thing is, corruption exists in all countries, including the United States, and it certainly exists in Russia.So if the big issue is corruption, then you would think that President Trump would have had equal reservations about dealing with Russia.I don’t think that was the core of the issue.
And was it undermining support for Ukraine or Ukraine’s strength, or perceived strength?
Well, I think—so it made the Ukrainians nervous all the time.It made those of us in foreign policy, institutions like the State Department, Defense Department, others, wonder whether there might be at some future time a change in our policy.That never happened when I was ambassador, but it created this element of uncertainty, because even though the policies stayed the same, it was clear where the president’s heart was, shall we say.
And I think that that made the Ukrainians very nervous because if they lost U.S. support, that would have been pretty devastating for the Ukrainian cause, even back in 2018, before Russia reinvaded.But I think it also provided succor and support for President Putin and his own views of Ukraine and what he might be able to get away with there.
Yovanovitch Ousted as Ambassador
… Before you were ousted, if that’s the right word, did you have a sense that policy was changing or that aid was being held up or that the policy towards Ukraine was changing?
No, I didn’t, because I think some of the events that you’re referring to with regard to the security assistance happened months after I left Ukraine.
But you didn’t have any indication at that point that on a policy basis things were changing, the relationship was changing.
No. In fact, we were working—I can’t remember exactly where we were, but we were working on the second tranche of Javelins to Ukraine.
And so what happens?What happens to you in the middle of this?How do you hear that the White House isn’t happy with you?
Well, I heard it from Ukrainians first, that former Mayor Giuliani was working with some Ukrainians, that they were in Ukraine; that they were also working with—I should say Ukrainian American citizens—that they were working with the general prosecutor, [Yuriy] Lutsenko, who wanted me out because we had—we were pushing for reform and he was not.
And so, I mean, I heard this, and I would go back to Washington.But of course I was going to official Washington; I wasn’t going to Rudy Giuliani to sort this out.And official Washington was basically saying, “Don’t worry about this; there’s nothing to it.”And in fact, in early March of 2019, I was asked to extend by another year.So even as there were these rumors on the one hand of various people, particularly Giuliani but not only, trying to remove me, there was also the State Department asking me to stay on.
So it was quite confusing, shall we say.And what I tried to do—I mean, what I tried to do was just do my job, because it’s kind of hard to sort through all of that.
And as you discovered what’s actually going on, how do you describe it?Is it they basically decided that politics was more important than the foreign policy, the United States’ foreign policy?How would you describe what the president, what his allies were doing, and how they were treating Ukraine?
So just to review the timeline, I realized that this was serious towards the end of March.I was told I had to leave immediately at the end of April, which I did.And then I went back to pack out and left permanently on May 20.
I learned about what was going on kind of in real time along with the American public and journalists and people who were digging into all of these things—the release of the transcript of the “perfect phone call” and the release of the whistleblower report.2I mean, I saw all of that at the same time as everybody else did.
And so when I was being removed during those several months, I didn’t know any of the things that were moving forward, so just to clarify for people.
And now that you do know, the president and his allies’, what was their approach towards Ukraine foreign policy, towards the election?What’s the big picture of what they were doing?
Well, I think the big picture is that President Trump—and exhibit A is the perfect phone call—that he was using Ukraine, using our U.S. government assistance, security assistance to a partner country for his own personal and political gain.He was willing—the U.S. government, Congress had authorized this because we thought it was good for Ukraine, but first and foremost because it was in our national security interests to be helping Ukraine defend itself.
And Trump was willing to hold that in abeyance until he got a favor, though, from President Zelenskyy.The American people deserve better.We deserve a president who will preserve and protect the United States and defend the American people.And what we saw was a president who was ready to undermine the Constitution, undermine the security of the American people for his own gain.
And for Vladimir Putin, who has said American talk of democracy and standing by allies is hypocritical, it’s all about self-interest, it’s just talk, what does a moment like that do for him?
I think it emboldens him.
Why?
Because I think Vladimir Putin has a pretty negative view about the United States, about our society.He thinks it’s a weak and profligate and lax-morals kind of a society, unlike Russia.And he thinks that, as you just stated, we talk big about our values, but when it comes down to it, we’re no better than anybody else.And that’s what Russia keeps on trying to push out there, that OK—not that they say the first part, OK, we may be bad.They just say, it’s all relative; everybody does it; and look at what the U.S. is doing.
And I think that phone call really demonstrated what Putin had been saying and what other dictators had been saying about the United States.
When you see your name in that phone call and “bad news” and the way you’re described, what is your reaction?3
It was—it was physical, actually.I was teaching a class at Georgetown University, and when I read—when I read the text, somebody in the room said that my face actually went white, because, you know, I had already been removed from my position as ambassador.Extremely unusual.Presidents do have the right to appoint ambassadors and to remove them, but they don’t usually do it accompanied by a smear campaign, because there’s no reason for a smear campaign; you just remove the ambassador.
So people knew that something else was going on who were paying attention.And so when I saw that transcript, I thought what else—he said I was “bad news,” but he also said, “She’s going to go through some things.”And I thought, what else does he have in mind?And I didn’t know.And that was—this is the most powerful man in the world saying that I’m going to go through some things.After I’ve already been, for all intents and purposes, fired.
My last question about the Trump period is, why didn’t Putin push Ukraine harder?Why didn’t this happen, what happens in the Biden years?Do you have a thought on why it didn’t happen during the Trump years?
Yeah.So I would make two points.The first is that Putin was building a bridge across the Kerch Strait, which connected Crimea with mainland Russia.And so he had been doing that throughout the Trump years, and it was completed in the Trump years.
And then in November of 2018, right over the Thanksgiving weekend, Russian vessels actually—Russian state vessels fired on Ukrainian vessels in international waters and then towed them to Russia.
So that was an escalation in terms of the naval domain.Now they were working in the naval domain.And it was also the first time that Russia right off the bat said, “Yes, these are our warships, and we take responsibility for this action.”
And so that happened under Trump’s watch.And usually what would happen with something like this is—this happened in the U.S. on a Sunday, the Sunday after Thanksgiving, so not great timing, but even in most administrations, what would happen is there would be an immediate statement, a phone call to [Foreign Minister] Lavrov or to the minister of defense—“Stand down, Russia, and release these vessels in international water”—because these kinds of actions take time.It was hours and hours before the Russians got the order to tow these vessels in.
And we did nothing.The Europeans issued all sorts of statements, but we did nothing.And in reading John Bolton’s book, it became clear that he felt he had to hold up any kind of constructive action on our part because the president wasn’t sure whether maybe the Ukrainians weren’t somehow in the wrong.
So, I mean, I think all of that sends a message to Putin, that he can do whatever he wants.But I think here’s the other thing.In that case, he did use the instrument of war for his purposes.But he’s getting pretty much everything he needs from President Trump.He’s getting sort of the smackdown of NATO, the humiliation of our best allies.I mean, the list goes on and on and on.And it’s clear that while maybe the policy hasn’t changed with regard to Ukraine, with regard to Russia, that maybe over time it might under a President Trump.
And so I think that Putin was probably betting on a second term of President Trump and hoping that he could get his way on many things, whether it’s NATO, whether it’s Ukraine, without using the instrument of war.
Putin and the Biden Administration
… What was Biden’s approach to Putin in those first — month only?What was he doing?
Well, I’m not sure I have the granularity that you’re looking for, but I think, as we discussed before, the Biden administration was, if not wanting to make a pivot to Asia, very focused on China and what was coming up with China.And then there was the meeting between Biden and Putin in—I think it was June of, I guess that would be 2021.And I think it was a workmanlike meeting where I think Biden was hoping to sort of lay the path forward, but they didn’t have a joint press conference, perhaps recalling the Trump-Putin press conference, I don’t know.But they—it wasn’t, shall we say, a warm kind of meeting-of-the-minds sort of a summit.
But it seemed that the path forward was going to be a relatively constructive one.And then Putin started building up in, I think it was September of 2021, and over the months there was a lot of men and materiel, 200,000-almost men that were completely encircling Ukraine.And so it was evident that maybe we were not on that constructive path forward.And so the Biden administration pulled together countries and partners, allies to start supporting Ukraine.
I get the sense from talking to people who know Biden that his belief was, “I don’t have any illusions about Putin; I don’t think I can see into his soul.He’s a killer, but he’s maybe somebody if we understand that we can work with.”But maybe Putin, by that point in his presidency, wasn’t somebody who could be deterred in the traditional ways.Do you think that Putin had changed by that point and that he wasn’t as susceptible to the traditional diplomacy, the warnings, the threats?
Maybe.He’d been in office two decades, and it’s clear from what we’ve seen about how he manages his—even his most senior partners and associates, that he is in charge, that he’s probably not getting the best information.Nobody’s gainsaying him and saying, “Hey, boss, you know, that might be a strategic miscalculation over here.”And I think it wasn’t only about Biden who—who knows what kind of an impression Biden made on Putin?
Then we have Afghanistan, the withdrawal from Afghanistan, which I think all over the world was seen as poorly handled and a sign of waning U.S. power.Shortly after that Putin actually starts the buildup.
And in Europe, the stars are changing or realigning in Europe as well, with Angela Merkel leaving the scene; Boris Johnson in the U.K.—enough said there; French elections coming up with the possibility of a really hard-right turn.And I think he looked at all of that, and he made a calculation that Biden would not be able to lead an international group of countries to support Ukraine and that there wouldn’t be the will to support Ukraine, and that even if it was there in the beginning, it would not continue.And I think he miscalculated.
He miscalculates.The Ukrainians fight back.… How dangerous is this moment where he is now?He’s making nuclear threats; he’s bet an awful lot on this domestically and internationally.How dangerous of a moment is it that we’re in right now?
I think it’s a very dangerous moment.I think that it’s a dangerous moment for Ukraine.I think it’s a dangerous moment for Russia.But I think it’s a dangerous moment for other countries in the world as well because it’s hard to see what the pathway forward is.The Russians are doubling down because they’re losing, and in order to extricate themselves, if they are even willing to extricate themselves—and that is an open question for me—but in order to extricate themselves, they need to have a better situation on the ground.They need to be winning, right?And then that will put them in a good position for eventual negotiations.
The Ukrainians are also doubling down because they are winning, but even more importantly, because this is an existential struggle for Ukraine.I mean, Putin has made clear, and those around him have made clear, that they do not see Ukrainians as a distinct people and culture, that they do not believe Ukraine is a country of its own, and that it should be reabsorbed back into Russia.
If the Ukrainians lose, they lose everything, and so they are not going to give up.
And so you have these two opposing forces, and so the question is, what does the outside world do?I would argue that we need to step very carefully, but we also really don’t have a choice, because if we say we’re not going to support Ukraine, even though that’s the right thing to do, we’re not going to do that because Vladimir Putin is threatening nuclear, the nuclear option or whatever other outrageous thing he’s going to do, that is not going to solve the issue.He will just take Ukraine and he will keep on going, and we will be threatened in ways that are … even closer to our most vital national security concerns.
So we have an option, I suppose.We can confront—and I use the word “confront” advisedly.But we can help Ukraine prevail now, or we confront Russia at some later date.But that could come at a time that Russia chooses and at a time that is not necessarily advantageous to the United States.
So this is what the military would call a wicked problem.I mean, like, what is the solution?Because there’s so many different impacts and effects.Just yesterday we saw the Russians allegedly sabotage their own pipelines to ensure that there would be no gas supplies to Europe and to create an environmental disaster in the Baltic Sea.I mean, all sorts of unexplainable and unimaginable things are happening right now.
And so we need to come together, I think first and foremost, and we need to stand firm.Because on the one hand, this is a very dangerous moment, and I don’t want to discount that Vladimir Putin isn’t completely capable of using at least tactical nuclear weapons; but on the other hand, I think the only thing that we can do is to stand firm, tell him publicly and privately that this is not really an option for Russia in terms of getting to where they want to get, and standing firm and supporting Ukraine.
It’s a dangerous time, but I comfort myself by thinking back to the Cold War, where we also had a number of standoffs with the then-Soviet Union.And yet somehow we were able to continue forward and find a way to avert the worst.
And so even though this is in some ways the greatest challenge, I think, of my lifetime in terms of international affairs, I’m hopeful that we can find our way forward to averting the worst disasters.
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