Marie Louise "Masha" Yovanovitch (born November 11, 1958) is a Canadian-American former diplomat and retired senior member of the United States Foreign Service.

[8][9] Yovanovitch's removal preceded a July 2019 phone call by Trump in which he attempted to pressure Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskyy to investigate Biden.

[15] From August 2001 to June 2004, as a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, she was the Deputy Chief of Mission of the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, Ukraine.

[22] During confirmation hearings, Yovanovitch acknowledged that Turks had committed mass killings, rapes, and expulsions of Armenians between 1915 and 1923, calling this "one of the greatest tragedies of the 20th century," but, in line with U.S. policy, declined to use the phrase Armenian genocide, saying that the use of this politically sensitive phrase was a policy decision that could be made only by the highest-ranking U.S. officials, namely President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

[25] After returning to Washington in 2012 and 2013, Yovanovitch served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs.

[7][34][35] Allegations against her were then made by Trump's personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani, as well as conservative commentator John Solomon of The Hill and Ukraine's then-top prosecutor, Yuriy Lutsenko, who accused her of being part of a conspiracy involving anti-corruption probes in Ukraine and efforts by the Trump administration to investigate ties between Ukrainian officials and the Hillary Clinton 2016 presidential campaign.

[36][40] Ukrainians who opposed Yovanovitch were also sources for Giuliani, who "was on a months-long search for political dirt in Ukraine to help President Trump.

[49] One week before an April 1, 2019 conference on anti-corruption, Parnas exchanged encrypted WhatsApp text messages with Robert F. Hyde that indicated the ambassador was under surveillance and that her security was at risk.

[34] Former senior U.S. diplomats Philip H. Gordon and Daniel Fried, who served as assistant secretaries of state for European and Eurasian Affairs and as National Security Council staffers under presidents of both parties, praised Yovanovitch and condemned Trump's "egregious mistreatment of one of the country's most distinguished ambassadors," writing that this had demoralized the U.S. diplomatic corps and undermined U.S. foreign policy.

[57] Michael McKinley, a career foreign service officer who served as ambassador to four countries and had been chief adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, resigned in October 2019 in protest of Trump's attacks against Yovanovitch and "the State Department's unwillingness to protect career diplomats from politically motivated pressure.

"[58][59] Yovanovitch's ouster became one of the issues explored in the House of Representatives impeachment inquiry against Trump;[43] her recall was termed "a political hit job" by Democratic members of Congress.

[9][63] On October 11, 2019, Yovanovitch gave closed-door deposition testimony before the House Oversight and Reform, Foreign Affairs and Intelligence committees.

[65] The State Department sought to stop Yovanovitch from testifying before Congress, in line with Trump's policy of refusing to cooperate with the impeachment inquiry.

[31] The House Intelligence Committee issued a subpoena, stating that "the illegitimate order from the Trump Administration not to cooperate has no force"—and Yovanovitch proceeded to give testimony.

[7] Yovanovitch testified that her removal was the result of "significant tension between those who seek to transform the country and those who wish to continue profiting from the old ways," and that false narratives were pushed from an "unfortunate alliance between Ukrainians who continue to operate within a corrupt system, and Americans who either did not understand that corrupt system, or who may have chosen, for their own purposes, to ignore it.

"[66] Yovanovitch described the State Department under Trump as "attacked and hollowed out from within," and warned that Russia and other U.S. rivals would benefit "when bad actors in countries beyond Ukraine see how easy it is to use fiction and innuendo to manipulate our system.

"[68][42] Yovanovitch also said that she was "shocked" and felt threatened by Trump's statement, in a phone call with Zelensky, that "she's going to go through some things," testifying that she was very concerned "that the President would speak about me or any ambassador in that way to a foreign counterpart.

Having seen, firsthand, the war and poverty and displacement common to totalitarian regimes, they valued the freedom and democracy the U.S. offers and that the United States represents.

[70] In her testimony, Yovanovitch detailed how Giuliani and his associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman worked with a corrupt Ukrainian prosecutor to orchestrate a smear campaign against her, oust her from her post as ambassador, and "circumvent official channels" of Ukraine policy.

[55] Yovanovitch also testified, "Perhaps it was not surprising that when our anti-corruption efforts got in the way of the desire for profit or power, Ukrainians who preferred to play by the old, corrupt rules sought to remove me.

"[71] House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff and other Democrats called Trump's conduct witness intimidation; Democratic Representative Jim Himes, a member of the Intelligence Committee, stated: "The president chose to respond to a patriotic and superb public servant with lies and intimidation.

"[72] After being ousted as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Yovanovitch became a Senior State Department Fellow at Georgetown University's Institute for the Study of Diplomacy.