‘It sure feels like genocide,’ former Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch says of Russia’s actions in Ukraine

Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch joins Margaret Hoover to discuss the next phase of Russia’s invasion, the successes and failures of the Biden administration’s response, and the potential global ramifications of the conflict.

Yovanovitch, author of the new book “Lessons from the Edge,” offers insight from her decades in the foreign service, including several years stationed in Kyiv. She explains why she believes the U.S. must help Ukraine prevail over Vladimir Putin’s forces to preserve the post-Cold War international order.

The former ambassador also assesses Ukraine’s development as a democracy, the leadership of President Volodymyr Zelensky, and how the current situation might be different if former U.S. President Donald Trump was still in the White House.

Yovanovitch – who was recalled from Kyiv in 2019 after Trump allies waged a smear campaign against her and later became a key witness in his first impeachment – voices concerns about the future of American democracy, as well as about the prospect of a presidential run by Trump’s former Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo.

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