MARIA YOVANOVITCH
Maria Yovanovitch is a former U.S. diplomat who served as the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine from 2016 to 2019, until she was recalled from her post. Her diplomatic career spans over three decades, during which she also served as the U.S. Ambassador to the Kyrgyz Republic (2005–2008) and the Republic of Armenia (2008–2011).
Maria gained significant public attention during the first impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump in 2019 when she testified before Congress about her removal as ambassador to Ukraine, which she attributed to a campaign against her led by Trump's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and others who allegedly saw her as an obstacle to their political objectives in Ukraine.
Born to parents who had survived the Nazi occupation of Europe and later emigrated, Yovanovitch was raised in Connecticut and joined the U.S. Foreign Service in 1986. Throughout her career, she specialized in issues related to the former Soviet Union and received numerous State Department awards for her service, including the Senior Foreign Service Performance Award eight times, the Superior Honor Award nine times, two Presidential Distinguished Service Awards, and the Secretary's Diplomacy in Human Rights Award.
After leaving the diplomatic service in 2020, she became a Senior Fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a nonresident fellow at Georgetown University's Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, where she has been engaged in academic work and public commentary. She published a memoir titled Lessons from the Edge in 2022, detailing her experiences as a diplomat and the events surrounding her removal from Ukraine. The book became a New York Times bestseller.
Throughout her career, Maria has been a consistent advocate for human rights and anti-corruption efforts. She received a Diplomacy for Human Rights Award for her work to free political prisoners in Armenia in 2008, and she also advocated to free an imprisoned whistleblower in Armenia in 2011.
A hallmark of her diplomatic career was her lifelong effort to stand up for human rights and root out corruption, including supporting new legal structures intended to address long-standing corruption in Ukraine's economy.
Since retiring, she has continued this advocacy through public speaking and writing, offering pointed analysis of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
In 2022, she delivered the keynote address at the conference "Beyond Borderland: 30 Years of Ukrainian Sovereignty," held shortly before Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, where she argued that stronger international responses to earlier Russian aggression could have helped prevent the 2022 war.
