Former diplomat Yovanovitch wins award for her work

Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch will receive an award honoring her service to international diplomacy at Georgetown University on Wednesday, a university spokesperson confirmed.

Yovanovitch will accept the 2020 Trainor Award from the University’s Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, an honor previously presented to former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, then-U.S. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz and then-United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan.

The award is presented annually to “an outstanding American or foreigner for distinction in the conduct of diplomacy,” according to the institute’s website.

Yovanovitch was abruptly recalled from Kyiv in May and became a central figure in the House’s impeachment inquiry into President Trump amid revelations that figures including Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko conducted a campaign against her alleging that she was working to undermine the Trump administration. The State Department has called Lutsenko’s allegations an “outright fabrication.”

“When civil servants in the current administration saw senior officials taking actions they considered deeply wrong in regard to the nation of Ukraine, they refused to take part,” Yovanovitch wrote in a recent opinion piece for The Washington Post. “When Congress asked us to testify about those activities, my colleagues and I did not hesitate, even in the face of administration efforts to silence us.”