CLEVELAND — The former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine was in town on Wednesday.
Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch visited the Ukrainian Museum and Archives in Tremont, where she was welcomed by students from Global Village Academy in Parma with a traditional bread and salt ceremony.
3News Russ Mitchell had the chance to sit down with her to discuss the current climate in Ukraine and at home, and her reflections on testifying on Capitol Hill during former President Donald Trump's impeachment hearings.
Russ Mitchell: "You were in Ukraine earlier this year. 14 months into the Russian invasion, how would you describe the resolve of the Ukrainian people at this point?"
Ambassador Yovanovitch: "I think the resolve, if anything, is even stronger than it was when the Russians first invaded on February 24th, 2022. When I was there in February for the anniversary, I was really struck by how Ukraine is a completely mobilized society, and not because there's been a draft, not because President Zelensky has said, you know, are going to do this. You are going to fight on the front lines. You are going to drive an ambulance, you are going to create a soup kitchen because people need food. It's because people see a need. They see a need for their fellow Ukrainians for Ukraine, and they fill that need it people, every man, woman, and child is doing what they feel needs to be done in order to further the cause."
Russ Mitchell: "One of the hats you wear these days is college professor at Georgetown. Given that, professor, what grade would you give the Biden administration on how it has handled the situation in Ukraine?"
Ambassador Yovanovitch: "I would actually give them a pretty good grade, and I don't speak for the Biden administration...but I would give them a pretty good grade. I mean, if you look at the support that has been provided from day one, basically because we had the intelligence and we released it in an unprecedented move. I've never seen anything like that in my adulthood where the US government releases intelligence not only about what is going on around a particular country, but also the intentions of those leaders to invade Ukraine. And I think that really did set Russia on its back foot. It allowed Ukraine to prepare, and it got a number of like-minded allies together."
Russ Mitchell: "You touched on this, but what is the end game for Ukraine?
Ambassador Yovanovitch: "If you ask me, the end game for Ukraine is that Ukraine is a sovereign country living in its international borders, and that includes Crimea and the Donbas. And its sovereignty means that it is allowed to govern itself internally without meddling from Russia, and it is allowed to choose its own allies. I think that's really important. There would have to be some kind of security guarantees for Ukraine. I mean, NATO membership is probably off the table for the near term, although not the long term. But in the interim, what would those security guarantees look like? Because nobody wants to be in this same place again in a couple of years."
Russ Mitchell: "You are a career diplomat and are seen as someone who's very courageous, who stands up for what she believes. I have to ask you about that last year, this last few months of your time in Ukraine, you're being attacked by the President of the United States, your boss, his personal attorney, some members of Congress who are trying to discredit you for what Democrats say is their own agenda. You testify in the first impeachment hearings, the president is tweeting while you are testifying from a personal level. Can you give me any idea of what that period was like for you?"
Ambassador Yovanovitch: "It was an out-of-body experience. I mean, it's not something I ever would've anticipated in my whole 30 plus career. I was kind of the rules, the rules, girl. I did what I was told. I followed the president, whether the president was a Democrat or a Republican, that foreign policy agenda and implemented it. And I continued to do that through the Trump years as well. I felt that the Trump administration actually strengthened our foreign policy towards Ukraine because they gave the go ahead for the first time to provide javelins to Ukraine. And that was really important at the time, symbolically, obviously now, not so symbolically unfortunately. So it was, like I said, it was almost like it was happening to somebody else because this couldn't be me in my life. I felt that there wasn't much I could do in the ____ like that. But the one thing you can control is yourself. And so what I wanted to do was to come through that experience with my integrity and my dignity intact, and to the extent that it was possible to defend the State Department, which was also under attack at that time, as you'll recall. And so I focused on what I could control because I couldn't control the rest of it."