Dialogs: Ambassador Maria Yovanovitch Explains Ukraine at Chicago Humanities Festival

The Chicago Humanities Festival has been offering in-person programs under the spring theme of โ€œPublic.โ€ Two programs on May 7 at the UIC Dorin Center featured law professor Anita Hill talking about her new bookย Believing: Our Thirty-Year Journey to End Gender Violenceย and sharing her first-hand knowledge of Supreme Court corruption.ย Later in the day, Ambassador Marie โ€œMashaโ€ Yovanovitch chatted about her new bookย Lessons from the Edge: A Memoir, and discussed her direct knowledge of executive branch corruption.ย 

Yovanovitch hit the national spotlight during her testimony at Trumpโ€™s impeachment trial. She had shared how she was recalled from her position because she spoke out against Rudy Giuliani and the former president for pressing the Ukrainian government to get dirt to use against the Biden campaign. They also requested a โ€œloyalty pledgeโ€ from her, which she refused as authoritarian blackmail. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also refused to defend his employee.ย 

But she had been a foreign service officer for three decades prior, including as US ambassador to Armenia and Kyrgyzstan. She explained that the fact she was a Russian speaker when the former Soviet Union split into 15 different countries helped her career trajectory. She was in Ukraine when Volodymr Zelenskyy won its democratic election, and โ€œthe Ukrainians were much better at accepting election results than the Americans,โ€ she noted.ย 

Her first posting was in Mogadishu, Somalia, as a logistics coordinator, a difficult position in a system โ€œrife with corruption,โ€ where everybody at every level expected a bribe. She noted Russiaโ€™s continuous use of graft as psychological operations to undermine other countries, such as theย recent appointmentย of former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder (1998-2005) to the board of Gazprom, the state-owned Russian fossil fuel concern. Yovanovitch also placed blame for the continuation of corruption in the US, where American policies with banks and real estate agents also helps bad actors to launder dirty money.

She had grown up during the Cold War, and, in her state department roles, was happy to help countries become democracies and launch market economies. But with no underlying regulations or laws, mafias descended onto these new governments. At that time, American policy-makers didnโ€™t condemn the first elected President Boris Yeltsin (1991-1999) for his growing transgressions because he was a decent partner in the move towards securing โ€œloose nukes.โ€ย 

After her discussion with the moderator, former US NATO Ambassador Ivo Daalder, the audience asked several questions about the steps that led Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine on February 24 this year. Yovanovitch remarked that many communists and nationalists in Russia wanted to reunite the Soviet Union, and Putinโ€™s annexation of former territories started with Crimea and the Donbas region. At that time, US sanctions helped arrest his land lust. But President Clinton eventually encouraged the G7 to add Russia to the inter-governmental political forum, creating the G8.ย 

When asked, โ€œbut why this invasion now?โ€ the ambassador said that Putin likely wants to โ€œgather up the lands,โ€ as the Russians say, to be his bloody legacy. But his war is pure terrorism, she said, and his war crimes of torture, murder, forced deportations and cultural desecration must be held to account. Putinโ€™s โ€œwar of choiceโ€ is destroying his own country, and there are lines for every product and service everywhere around the country. If he wanted to restore the country as the former Soviet Union, heโ€™s definitely reinstating the fear, the hunger and the want. Yovanovitch listed the reasons why Putin is failing, including his underestimating how fiercely the Ukrainians would fight back. He also didnโ€™t realize how weak his military is, and thatย NATO countriesย would rally around their democratic ally.ย 

Maria Yovanovitch. Photo by Timothy Schmidt, courtesy Chicago Humanities Festival.

Yovanovitch is proud of the Ukrainian peopleโ€™s resolve to stand up to invasion, and she thinks they will eventually win, but the conflict will take a long time. The Russians are masters of disinformation, something she knows is also on the rise in the US. Americans need to vote in record numbers to save our own democracy, and not take our freedoms for granted. She encourages Americans to vote in all upcoming elections. Chicagoans should check their voter registrations for theย Illinois primary electionย on June 28, 2022.ย 

Theย Chicago Humanities Festivalย spring sessions continue with the โ€œPublicโ€ theme on May 14, with speakers including actor Selma Blair, political philosopher Francis Fukuyama, and deafย Dancing with the Starsย champion Nyle DiMarco.ย 

Did you enjoy this post and our coverage of Chicagoโ€™s arts scene? Please consider supporting Third Coast Reviewโ€™s arts and culture coverage byย making aย donation by PayPal.ย Choose the amount that works best for you, and know how much we appreciate your support!

Karin McKie
Karin McKie

Karin McKie is a Chicago freelance writer, cultural factotum and activism concierge. She jams econo.

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