Washington’s ambassador to Ukraine has been dismissed from service two months ahead of schedule. The development comes less than a month after the top Ukrainian prosecutor claimed she gave him a ‘do-not-prosecute list.’
Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch will leave her position on May 20, some two months ahead of the end of her tenure, the Ukrainian media and the US government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) reported earlier this week, citing sources within the American embassy in Kiev.
According to an Embassy announcement I obtained, US Ambassador Yovanovitch is now stateside and will return to Kyiv on Saturday, May 11. She will then depart her post permanently on Monday, May 20.
“The White House’s outrageous decision to recall her is a political hit job and the latest in this Administration’s campaign against career State Department personnel,”said Eliot Engel (D-New York), chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Maryland) in a statement on Tuesday, adding that it is “clear that this decision was politically motivated.”
Yovanovitch, who took the post of the ambassador back in 2016 under the Obama administration, does not have a particularly flawless service record, as just over a month ago she found herself at the center of a scandal after Ukraine’s prosecutor general Yury Lutsenko told The Hill that the ambassador actually gave him “a list of people whom we should not prosecute” during their first meeting.
At that time, the US State Department branded his claim “an outright fabrication.” However, several weeks before the prosecutor’s claim, Yovanovitch, bluntly called on Ukraine to sack its special anticorruption prosecutor in one of her speeches, in which she described the results of Kiev’s anti-corruption reforms in scathing terms.
Lutsenko backtracked on the claim of an actual “do-not-prosecute list” but told the Ukrainian UNIAN news agency that Yovanovitch was extremely vocal in her defense of several Ukrainian anti-corruption activists, who themselves were under investigation.
“I listed some so-called anti-corruption activists under investigation. She said it was unacceptable, as it would undermine the credibility of anti-corruption activists,” Lutsenko told UNIAN. “I took a piece of paper, put down the listed names and said: ‘Give me a do not prosecute list.’ She said: “No, you got me wrong.’ I said: “No, I didn’t get you wrong.”