Marie Yovanovitch on what surprises her about Putin and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine from 2016 until President Trump abruptly removed her in 2019, spoke to Salon about the Russia-Ukraine war one month into the invasion and shared her expertise on the relationship between the two nations. “I did feel that Putin would probably become aggressive again because that has been his pattern with Georgia in 2008, 2014, the first invasion of Ukraine,” Yovanovitch told Salon’s Andrew O’Hehir. “Now we're seeing the second invasion of Ukraine, but I wouldn't necessarily have predicted that it would be Ukraine.” Her book, “Lessons from the Edge,” available now, is a memoir about her career as a diplomat, leading up to her testifying during President Trump’s first impeachment.