Marie Yovanovitch: Lessons From The Edge (A Memoir)

Marie Yovanovitch, “Marie Yovanovitch: Lessons From The Edge (A Memoir),” Mariner Books, 2022, 365 pp.

Marie Yovanovitch is one of my new-found heroes, she joins Fiona Hill, Alex Vindman, and Liz Cheney. (Navalny in a Russian prison is another).

This is a particularly interesting book as it is written from a person thoroughly knowledgeable of both the Ukraine and Russia and written before Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.  Yovanovitch was leaving (pushed out) of Ukraine just as Zelensky was taking power.  The Trump administration wanted to orchestrate an investigation against Joe Biden and his son Hunter, but Yovanovitch  was an obstacle.  Yovanovitch was used to seeing disinformation used by Oligarchs in countries that used to be part of the Soviet Union.  Often it was targeted at U.S. diplomats and even Ambassadors who got in the way of their schemes.  But the State Department always backed up their personnel…Not this time.  The rot that permeated the department beginning with Secretary of State Tillerson and then Pompeo was having its effect.  When Yovanovitch was accused of saying disrespectful things about Trump, David Hale, the department’s number-three-official recommended that she publicly reaffirm her loyalty as Ambassador and FSO to POTUS and the Constitution.  She could affirm her loyalty to the Constitution but not to an individual.

Yovanovitch concluded the President of the US had attempted to use his office for his own personal and political gain.  Had he succeeded it would have put America in the same league as struggling transition countries—Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, Somalia, and Russia—countries she had spent much of her career trying to help reformers establish the rule of law to protect against avaricious oligarchs and kleptocrats.  Yovanovitch’s removal as Ukraine’s ambassador was important for Giuliani to demonstrate to the oligarchs that his powers were derived straight from Trump.

My Notes:

Pg. 10:  Marie moved with her parents from Canada to South Kent, CT.  in 1962 where she then attended school and her father taught at the school.

Pg. 234:  Secretary of State Tillerson made it clear from the moment he took office that he didn’t trust the career staff at the State Department.  He fired or sidelined senior officers, implemented a hiring freeze, which left offices severely understaffed, introduced other cost-cutting measures that undermined State’s effectiveness, brought in a management consultant team that knew nothing about diplomacy, and generally ignored the experts who were left.  (Not long after, Tillerson was fired by Tweet and replaced with Pompeo).

Pg. 296:  President Zelensky told Trump that Ukraine wanted to buy more Javelin missiles from the US in order to bolster its defenses against Russia.  Trump responded: “I would like you to do us a favor through.”  He went on to stipulate that Ukraine should investigate Hunter and Joe Biden and their relation to Burisma. Trump explained to Zelensky that Marie Yovanovich (the now fired Ambassador) “was bad news and the people she was dealing with in The Ukraine were bad news also, just what to let you know that.”  Remarkably Zelensky piled on and said he had requested information “for the investigation.”  Not to be outdone, Trump got the last word in declaring, “Well, she’s going to go through some things.”