Honestly, I never imagined such a whole scale invasion. When I was ambassador in Ukraine, I thought that keeping a low level war going in the east destabilizing Ukraine in that way with cyberattacks, assassinations, disinformation, economic warfare. I thought that was sufficient for Russia to realize its aims of trying to destabilize Ukraine, and for Ukraine`s desires to join NATO and the EU.
Yovanovitch reflects on her expectations regarding Russia's actions in Ukraine during her tenure as ambassador.
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I think that President Putin was getting what he needed out of the Trump administration.
I think that gave Vladimir Putin a lot of encouragement that the United States was, you know, certainly not the Trump administration was going to be supporting Ukraine.
We were promised that if Russia would invade, that there will be severe sanctions. And I think that`s what Russia is getting. And I think it is painful.
Well, I think it just shows that President Trump was using Ukraine as a pawn for his own personal reasons.