Original to: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/03/putin-marie-yovanovitch-biden-ukraine (paywall, limited xs)
Former US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch Talks Path to War Ousted by Donald Trump as his team schemed in Ukraine, Yovanovitch is watching Russia’s war from afar—and urging the Biden administration to do more. (interview by Abigail Tracy, VF) On Wednesday, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy pleaded with President Joe Biden and the United States Congress for greater assistance, comparing Russia’s attack on his country to Pearl Harbor and 9/11. Three weeks into the bloody war in Ukraine, Zelenskyy has emerged as an unlikely hero, the face of continued Ukrainian resistance to Russian aggression. Following Zelenskyy’s emotional address, Biden issued his own, pledging further support for Ukraine, military and humanitarian. But President Biden stopped short of Zelenskyy’s chief requests: fighter jets and a no-fly zone. As Washington debates the lengths to which the U.S. should engage in the conflict, it is increasingly clear that Vladimir Putin has no intention of backing down. Vanity Fair spoke with Marie Yovanovitch, the former ambassador to Ukraine ousted by Donald Trump and a key figure in his first impeachment trial, who this week published a memoir called Lessons From the Edge. Yovanovitch spoke to us about the war in Ukraine, what led to Putin’s invasion, and what she would advise were she in her previous role. This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity. Vanity Fair: What are your biggest takeaways at this moment? Marie Yovanovitch: I think the biggest takeaway is that there was the world before February 24 and there’s a world after. It’s evident that it’s changed for Ukraine with Putin’s war; a choice to invade a country that was not posing a threat. It’s also more broadly a threat to European security and upon which foreign relations are conducted. The sanctity of sovereignty; the sanctity of borders. He doesn’t have the economy; he doesn’t have the ideas. When the Ukrainian people are thinking about their future, a number of times, they have looked around and they have chosen their own path to the future and they are looking West because of the hopes of a future there. I think that’s why Ukrainians decided to go that route, Putin can’t compete. So he’s chosen a different path, a war of aggression that he’s wrecking on Ukraine. But I think he has broader goals in mind because he does not feel that the current order benefits him. So I think he’s seeking to destroy it and that, in my opinion, is a direct threat to the United States because this system has not only benefited us, it has benefited many other countries and it has ushered in a period of unparalleled prosperity, security, and freedom. What impact do you think Putin’s actions have had on those institutions—whether it’s the United Nations, whether it’s NATO—do you think they’re holding up to the current pressure that Putin is applying, this stress test? Well, it certainly is a stress test. I think that there’s been widespread recognition in the past couple of decades that we need to look at our institutions as living, breathing organisms. There needs to be some accommodation that the world of 2020, to pick a date, or 2022 is different from the world of 1945. China obviously is a big world power now and there are a number of other countries that want seats at the table. And so how do we accommodate that? How do we reform the U.N. system? I think that is very important. You also mentioned NATO, I think there’s a before and an after. I think that Putin was hoping that he could sow divisions in NATO and that he could use Ukraine as a test for the West. And I think the West has passed that test with flying colors. Germany showed up. Oh, my gosh. I mean, there were decades, decades of foreign security policy reversed. Ponying up troops and equipment to reinforce the Eastern flank of NATO. If what Putin wanted was less of NATO, he got a whole lot more of NATO. If you were in your previous role as ambassador to Ukraine what would you be advocating for in this scenario? President Zelenskyy addressed Congress and expressed his thanks for our support, but also had a number of requests and President Biden shortly thereafter rolled out the next mega-package of assistance, both humanitarian and security assistance. I think that was hugely important and hopefully can be expedited to Ukraine. Time is of the essence. Every day, Ukrainians are dying because of this indiscriminate attack. We need to get that assistance to Ukraine as fast as possible, and we’ve already provided a lot, but we need to keep it coming. Obviously one of Zelenskyy’s biggest requests right now is a no-fly zone. I would love to hear your view on why that might be problematic at the moment, but also what that entails. A no-fly zone is a very serious step because basically you are closing the sky to the adversary, the enemy, and that requires shooting down planes and shooting anything on the ground that is shooting at Ukrainians or alternatively the planes that are keeping the skies closed to the enemy. So if there are American or NATO pilots in those planes that puts our pilots, NATO pilots in direct conflict. That is very, very dangerous. No question about it. But here’s what I would say. We have the smartest, most creative thinkers in the Pentagon and are there other ways to think about this? For example—perhaps not now, perhaps in the future—a humanitarian corridor of some sort or maybe you could have Ukrainian pilots in those planes, but they would need planes. There’s been a lot of back-and-forth about the MiGs that are going to Ukraine, that are not going to Ukraine. I would keep that on the table. Maybe now is not the right time for it, although from my point of view—as somebody outside of government—what I see is Ukrainians being killed every day and we have means to help them further help themselves. And so how, how can we do that in a creative way? I understand and I am grateful that President Biden is being prudent and does not want to be escalatory. Nobody wants to push Putin over the edge or into a corner. But I think there’s also the question of how long can we watch this carnage in our living room on our computers? You can see the effect it’s having in Europe, not only on their leaders, but also on the public. And I think the same thing is true here in the United States. People are affected by this. I think we should be helping more and more and more, but we want to do it in a smart way. The other thing I would say is that we need to remember that the country that is escalating is Russia. Russia is the aggressor and we cannot allow Putin to set the conditions of this war. Putin is a bully and what he understands is strength and he’s floating around the idea that Russia is a nuclear power, which of course makes all of us kind of step back and gasp. There was that set piece on Russian TV where Putin is ordering the defense minister and the head of the general staff to change the alert status. Maybe that was a bluff, maybe it wasn’t. We were prudent in how we approached it, we did not respond in kind, we canceled an exercise. I think that’s what we look to our leaders for in a dangerous situation. We want them to be prudent and careful, but we also need to understand that in dealing with a man like Putin, who is a bully and really only understands strength, sometimes I think he looks at our actions as not reflecting strength. And so he keeps on pushing on sometimes. When we deal with people like this, there is a risk in not being bold enough. What is that line? This is a moment in history where, you said before, is this a stress test? I think it’s a test of both our values and interests. From my point of view, watching the Ukrainian people being slaughtered in a war of extermination is not in keeping with our values. But I also think that our interests are also at stake because he has broader ambitions. It’s an attack on the international order. So our interests are at stake here as well. We will be less secure in a world where dictators kind of dictate the way things are gonna go. And, you know, I’m gonna grab a little bit here and grab a little bit there. How do you think the United States’ previous responses to Russian aggression—whether it was Crimea or Donbas—have led us to where to this point? Just looking at the time when Vladimir Putin has been in power. In 2008, he attacked Georgia and broke off parts of Georgia into separate little statelets that are unrecognized except by Russia and a couple other rogue states. We criticized and we wrung our hands but we didn’t even apply any sanctions, as far as I know. So he absorbed that and we continued, I think, to hope that if we included Putin in the international order, in the organizations and institutions that we’ve been talking about, that Russia would change its way. And then 2014 happened. We were, I think, very taken aback. It was a bigger, bolder effort. More land was taken, first Crimea and then parts of the Donbas in the east of Ukraine. And again, lots of criticism, there were sanctions that were imposed, lots of assistance to Ukraine. But things sort of subsided. And while there was some ostracism of Putin, it was bearable. It was not sufficient to dissuade him from further action. So he waited a number of years and in 2022, we’ve got a full-scale invasion of the second largest country in Europe. It’s quite clear that we did not do enough to dissuade Putin from going down this path. Do you think Donald Trump had an impact on Putin’s aggression? He came to see Ukraine as a weaker country, not as deserving of much attention. And when he did put his attention on it, he saw Ukraine as a pawn that could be bullied into doing his bidding. I think that made a huge impact on Zelenskyy and I think that Putin and other bad actors around the world saw that our president was acting in his own personal interests. He was using his office for his personal interest rather than to work in the interest of the American people, in our national security interest, because it wasn’t in our interest. It was our policy to help Ukrainians defend themselves. I think the other thing that Putin saw in Donald Trump’s administration was Trump’s negativity toward NATO and his actions toward other NATO countries. Why now? I think Putin was looking around the geopolitical landscape. He was looking at the U.S. and our internal divisions, thinking he could get away with it again. And I think he was given incorrect information as to the relative strength and readiness and capabilities of the Russian army. But I will tell you that until we started seeing the Russian army encircling Ukraine on overhead satellite maps and so forth and until the Biden administration began releasing intelligence on what they saw and what they knew the intent of Russia was, I just did not think, while I was ambassador, that it would come to this. And here we are. It’s really sad. ----- For context: Marie Yovanovitch' s just released book 'Lessons from the Edge', on her time with (& out) Trump review in The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/mar/20/lessons-from-the-edge-review-marie-yovanovitch-trump-putin-ukraine
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