Marie Yovanovitch Admits Russia’s Invasion Of Ukraine Took Her By Surprise

Marie Yovanovitch confessed Tuesday that even she’d been stunned by Russia’s all-out war on Ukraine.

“Honestly, I never imagined such a wholescale invasion,” the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine told MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell.

“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 thwart Ukraine’s desires to join NATO and the EU,” she explained.

“This is a wholesale invasion of Ukraine,” continued Yovanovitch, who served as ambassador from 2016 to 2019 when she was recalled amid a smear campaign from Donald Trump allies during the former president’s first impeachment for Ukraine misconduct.

“It is a brutal war of aggression,” she added. “And I have to say, even though we know what (Russian President Vladimir) Putin is capable of, given his past actions, I never expected to see this in Ukraine.”

Watch the full interview here: