Ep. 482 — Amb. Marie Yovanovitch

The Axe Files with David Axelrod

CNN

News

4.6 • 7.7K Ratings

🗓️ 24 March 2022

⏱️ 69 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Growing up the child of Eastern European and German immigrants, former US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch strived to fit in. Learning to navigate other cultures ultimately proved useful during her 33 years in the Foreign Service. In 2019, her diplomatic career ended after a months-long smear campaign led to her recall from Ukraine by then-President Trump. She joined David to talk about lessons learned from her parents, the on-going Russian invasion of Ukraine, her take on Putin’s mindset, what it was like being attacked by a sitting president and her new book, “Lessons from the Edge.”

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Music
0:06.0	And now, from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN Audio, the Axe Files, with your host David Axelrod.
0:18.0	In 2019, US Ambassador to Ukraine, Rye Ivanovich, became what no career diplomat wants or expects to become.
0:27.0	Issue in America's domestic politics, targeted by President Trump and his political apparatchics, apparently because she stood in the way of their efforts to smear Joe Biden.
0:36.0	Ivanovich was summarily dismissed and became a star witness in Trump's first impeachment trial.
0:41.0	But if that's all you know about her, you don't know nearly enough.
0:45.0	About her extraordinary life story and her distinguished 33 year tour of duty in the Foreign Service, she's written a book about it called Lessons From the Edge.
0:54.0	And we sat down this week to talk about her story and the current events in Ukraine. Here's that conversation.
1:08.0	Ambassador, it is so good to see you. We were talking before we went on the air. You are in the midst of a big book tour for your wonderful book Lessons From the Edge.
1:19.0	So I'm sure in some ways you're all talked out by now, but I'm happy to see you because it's such a momentous time to get together.
1:27.0	Yeah, no, it really is. And it's a pleasure to be able to have a discussion with you today.
1:31.0	So everybody's talking to you about Ukraine and Russia because of your obvious expertise as a diplomat.
1:38.0	But you also must look at this through the eyes of the child of people who were immigrants from refugees really from Eastern Europe.
1:48.0	And talk to me about that. Your family's journey and how that has shaped you.
1:53.0	Yeah. So my parents were incredible in many ways and in other ways their journey was very typical.
2:01.0	My father left the Soviet Union when he was very small group in Yugoslavia.
2:06.0	He was a German prisoner of war and then lived out the he escaped and lived out the rest of the war in France and then ultimately ended up in Canada.
2:18.0	Let me just stop by and let me stop on him for a second because he was also orphaned.
2:24.0	I mean, this is a really incredible story.
2:27.0	He was orphaned very young and his father died almost immediately when they got to Yugoslavia. And he had his whole own tragic story.
2:37.0	And his mother put him in a school for cadets for Russian cadets.
2:44.0	This was an expatriate community in Yugoslavia for Russians.
	...

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