Shawn Ryan Show - #21 Mark Turner - Inside Ukraine (Recon Marine)

Episode Date: March 24, 2022

Former Recon Marine Mark Turner who went to Ukraine on 18 hours notice at the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine joins us on the show. He gives us an inside perspective on what's happening in country as the war continues on. After speaking with high level Ukrainian Politicians they've asked him to train both Ukrainian military and civilians to go fight the Russians on the front lines of the war. Mark is now recruiting more former US Special Operations Veterans to train both Ukrainian military and civilians to fight the Russians through his nonprofit The Overwatch Foundation.   Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website - https://www.shawnryanshow.com Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/VigilanceElite TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@shawnryanshow Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/shawnryan762 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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He's a former Recon Marine. He was in Ukraine at the start of the war. He's going to give us his perspective on what was going on over there and what exactly he was doing in country. Before we get started, I'm going to ask you guys a solid. If you like the episode, if you're listening to it on Spotify or iTunes, please just take just a second. Leave us a review.

If you can type in at least one word. Let us know what you think. I really appreciate it guys. That absolutely helps me out. Now let's get to the show. Enjoy it. So when you're in the Ukraine, and you're in a church,

cathedral, steeple, trying to look at sniper positions. We're not going to war, we're just helping here. And if the war comes here, that's fine, but the war's not here. So some of them still just don't get it. It's like they're in your country and you still think. It's like they're in your country, and you still think.

It's surreal, though. It's surreal, though, isn't it? Imagine if in New York, the Russians invaded. You're not going to be able to get it. You're not going to be able to get it. It's an unbelievable thing. You think in 9-11, when that happens, you're sitting watching it, it's real.

It's real. But it's unbelievable. Our instructions were basically find this guy or find the priest. It's not how we work, I told Zach right away, I said, look man, we would never run something like this. It's okay, it's okay, we'll be alright, we'll be alright. These two guys come out with a car, they're almost tripping over their own feet. AK is drawn on us. Hey guys, let me tell you about this subscription service that I've been working real hard on called vigilance elite Patreon. Basically on Patreon we haven't broken up into three different tiers.

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the support is greatly appreciated, and it is the only thing that makes this show drive on. So thank you for all the support. See you on Patreon. Mark Turner, welcome to the show, brother. Thanks for having me. Man, you are like my favorite type of guest to interview on here. You're really quiet. Not a whole lot of people know who you are or what you've been up to.

And we got a message on Sean Ryan's show, Instagram account saying that you had been in Ukraine since the war started, one on 18 hours notice, and you were coming back to kind of recruit some guys to go back over with you. And so I cleared my schedule. I wanted to get you here as fast as possible. So here we are six days later, and you're in the studio. I'm really excited for this. Yeah, and thanks for you know helping us get the word out and trying to do a lot there and you know you've been great with your time and your

effort to help us get the word out. So thanks. Well you're welcome. It's it's gonna be real pleasure interviewing you. So I just want to knock out some of the business stuff right up front. So the reason you're coming here is you're not looking for any credit or anything like that. You came here because you are training Ukrainians and basically more fighting. And so you came back to hopefully recruit special operations types to go back over with you and train these guys. And you're also looking for equipment, so any of these tactical gear companies, flashlights, magazines, whatever they've got that they can donate to you guys for your mission

over there, you're welcoming. So where before we start where can everybody find you? My Instagram Mark Turner BJJ My email is my personal email is good as well. I know I might end up regret putting that out there, but Mark Turner BJJ Gmail and then the Overwatch Foundation is our nonprofit UK that's the Overwatch Foundation on Instagram as well and all the links will be on there for the website and all that kind of stuff as well. Perfect. I'll link everything below. So if you are looking to get over there and help Mark train some of the Ukrainians and

get these guys spun up for the Russian threat that they're dealing with, there's your guy. He has all the logistics figured out. And you're also going on Mike Rittlin's podcast who gives a phenomenal interview. I don't know when that's Aaron, but I'm gonna link that his podcast below to drive traffic because there's no doubt in my mind,

whatever I don't cover, Mike will definitely pick up the ball. So great interview and our great interviewer, Mike's all makes a solid. But, so how I want to kind of go through this interview is, nobody really knows what's going on other than mainstream media. And, it's time goes on more and more people

are realizing mainstream media is not put in facts out. There's an agenda behind it. And a lot of people aren't watching it anymore. And so I haven't given any opinions, anything, on Ukraine, Russia, conflict, because I don't trust anything that the mainstream's put in out. In fact, they've already been caught and lies. One of them was the was the fighter pilot that wound up G&A video game fantasy that they put out there as fact. And then there was another one too, I can't remember what it was, but what you're unaware of, because you said you don't even know what's going on on mainstream.

of because you said you don't even know what's going on on mainstream. So I want to get your perspective of what's actually going on on the ground over there, what some of these guys are saying, what you're seeing on the ground. I know you talked to some high ranking diplomats and government officials that are giving you intelligence about what's happening over there. And so I want to kind of intertwine that with what you're actually doing over there. And so I want to kind of intertwine that with what you're actually doing over there. And then at the end, we'll talk about what you're doing with your nonprofit. But always give everybody a gift.

Oh, man. Do I open it now or what? Go ahead, open it up. Give it an experience. Look, I'm on my green, you're giving me a box that's open here. This is a trick you can wrap it, don't be bashful. Oh my goodness, I don't even know if I should show these. These are like worth more than gold at the moment, aren't they? We just got those back and stuff.

Oh, okay. So this is the first of the new batch. That's the first of the new batch. Wow. Fantastic. I don't know if they'll be on the website yet, but they're back. How many bags here? Four bags? These are not going to make it to the airport.

We'll give you some more. These are going to make it back home. I'm going to destroy these. Thank you very much. That's fantastic. Good these. Thank you very much. That's fantastic. Good stuff. Thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. So let's dive right into it. Okay.

So just day one, where were you when you got this call? Yeah, so, a little bit of background on me. I was in the Marine Quartet 10 years started in the infantry, finished was in the Marine Quartet years starting in the Infantry, finished off in the Reconnaissance Community. Been out longer than I was in at this point. You know, combat veteran, all that good stuff. I have a Juditzo Academy now in the Chicago area and we have a huge kind of veteran community in the academy.

Some special operations guys, some veterans, a lot of police first responders, that kind of stuff. So we have a good community there of guys. One of the guys in the academy is a Ukrainian guy. No military experience or anything. Actually, brand new American, his name's Yuri, I'll talk about Yuri quite a bit. Brand new American naturalized citizen, I'm a naturalized citizen as well from Scotland obviously. And we're good friends. And leading up to the war, obviously there was a lot of stuff on TV and, you know, chatting back and forth, checking in with a friend, how's everything going back home.

And, you know, kind of going back and forth. When the war kicked off, he like obviously completely changed. Right. I mean, that's real now. I mean, it was real before, but now there's Russians in this country kind of thing So and I could see it was affecting them and I said it was at the weekend. I said look Let's go to the range let's shoot a little bit You know, he's he's he's kind of getting into his rights as an American God, he's concealed carries learn how to shoot this kind of stuff

So I'll go to the range, cut the hours, it'll get your mind off the TV and out of your phone, right? Just go ahead a little bit. So we're doing our thing at the ranges you do, and I think I'm just gonna go home and check on my family. And I said, well, you can't go back there right now. You know what, I mean, obviously a lot of uncertainty, it's worried, you can't go back there right now. You know what? I mean, obviously a lot of uncertainty.

It's worried. I don't have any experience. I really want to go back. I said, well, let me see if I can get some guys together. And we'll do, you know, we have this nonprofit. We do a lot of disaster relief. Like kind of fast action type stuff with hurricanes, these kind of things. I said, let me see if I can get some guys together and we'll do some kind of fast action type stuff with hurricanes, these kind of things.

Let me see if I can get some guys together and we'll do some kind of humanitarian thing there and we'll go with you, make sure everything's okay. Not to like protect them really, but kind of, right, to go with them. Yeah. And he's like, he was kind of blown away by that. And I mean, we move fast, put it away with, well, I was so good at what we do is because we're quick quick to act when these things happen, right?

So yeah, so 18 hours later we were Pretty much on the way to Ukraine from that conversation To getting on the bark that mean it was that fast and you have your married married with two kids Yeah, three kids, one's 18. But yeah, two little ones, four years old, and three month old. And you're over there with 18 hours notice. Yeah. How long was this going on?

How long had the war started before you guys got in country? I think three days. Where did you fly into? Um, a neighboring country, we'll see. OK. I really want to say because of what we're doing there and what we're doing in that neighbouring country as well. But yeah, neighbouring country drove to the border.

So it was all and all with all the travel and the connections. It was close to like 17, 18 hours, airport plane. And then seven hours drive, which ended up being nine hours drive because we made a few stops and gathered humanitarian supplies on the way. So a nine hour drive to the border. Throughout the interview, if there's anything that I understand, there's a lot of sensitive material that you don't want to reveal. So just say, you know, as much as you can and if you can't go any farther than just say.

Yeah, no, I mean, look, I'm here to be as open and transparent as possible. There is obviously for op-seq stuff names and some places I won't say just because we're still actively doing things there and we are planning on going back and obviously you have a massive lot of hands so but yeah I'll be as transparent with as much as I can. What kind of equipment did you take with you? We went pretty slick right? We didn't take any weapons with us, we had connections to that kind of stuff in country, if and when we needed it. We didn't even check any bags. It didn't check any bags partly because, I mean, look, we're a lot going on, we're doing stuff kind of quick, hard and fast, and I mean, imagine getting stuck trying to do something like that because the airline lost your back, right? So, um, yeah as much as you could pack into a carry-on bag is what we had

We also knew when we stopped and got a bunch of supplies in the neighboring country We carried all that stuff across the border. We walked across the border. You walked across the border with stuff in hand Yeah, was anybody there to receive you? Yeah, so what happened when we arrived in the neighboring country, we started building our network there before we even left. People always say, how can you do that stuff so fast? And I say, well, we had 19 hours of kind of airport flight

time to prepare stuff and to coordinate and then we had that drive. So you can get a lot done if we were to take in all that time and plan that here, state side, you're missing a day or two days, right? So it's kind of punch out and go and work the plan as you're going. So we had that network to get us from the airport in the neighboring country to the border and it was very funny because you're obviously speaks Ukrainian but we don't have anybody that spoke the language in this neighboring country and we tried to set it up to where the guy who would come and pick us up it was kind of like a bad game of telephone, right? I'm coordinating with you, but you're coordinating with a guy who's going to come

meet us. So we're planning it and we say that we have this long drive. We're arriving kind of in the late afternoon, early evening and now we have to do that drive to the border. It would be fantastic if this guy could fill the car up with as much medical supply because that's what we were doing. We took basically medical supplies that you would put in an iFAC, like combat travel stuff. Stuff for packing wounds, turnikits, we ended up not being able to get turnikits in country. I brought a bunch of turnikets and then we sourced a bunch more. But that kind of stuff, compression bandages, gauze, you know, the same kind of stuff that you'd imagine is in an IFAQ. So, give the guy a list, it'd be good if he had the

car packed full of that stuff. So, we just get in the car and we can go to the border. So, he comes up and the guy is so funny we called him Rambo because he showed up he had like all of drab gear on and the hat like you know standing there at the airport it's like that's that's our guy for sure like he stuck out he thought he's James Bond or something right yeah coming to pick these guys up so he shows us he's all excited to show us what it has in the trunk and it's like, everything we had on the list, he got like one of.

So it's like, man, you know, hard to go with fantastic. Thank you, we need more. Like we need this car, bursting, and stuff. So we proceeded to stop at every pharmacy that we could find and it's two American murkets and Yuri go into these pharmacies and we're like we just need to gut your pharmacy of all the stuff and you know imagine you're in a Eastern European country, one, two people working in these pharmacies and we come rolling in and just got the whole store they're thinking like what in the world is going on here you know. Once they kind of caught on

to what we were doing they were incredibly helpful and just started you know giving us more than we were even asking for. So we did that five times we basically kept stopping until it was time for pharmacies to close. Okay, and we filled up the car and you know continued on to the border. Got there really late, ran into a, we're about a mile or two away from the border and ran into a federal police of that neighboring country. Told them who we were, what we were doing and they were like, look the border's kind of dodgy at night, you know all this kind of stuff, we, you probably

don't want to go right now, really late at night, I think it was like two in the morning, three in the morning, you want to go right now and we're not gonna let you go right now, in the morning you guys can go ahead and punch over. So we just kind of hung out on the side of the road, snowing, you know, cold, middle of the night. There was all kinds of other cars there. You can imagine there's a lot of Ukrainian people trying to get out.

What, how many people did you estimate was that was the border flooded with people? Like, I was coming out. There was a lot of people at the time we crossed, we were the only ones crossing in. Yeah. There were some people on the outside, like I said, maybe a mile away staged, kind of waiting for people to come out. You know, but a border, you've had some experience with borders, You know, but a border, you've had some experience with borders. Borders can be a dodgy place, you know. It kind of reminds me a little bit of the cantina from Star Wars. You know, it's just, you have all kinds of people there.

And you don't really know. So, yeah, we had kind of a watch and keeping an eye out. Now that we had to sit there for a couple hours, keep checking with the police highlighters going now, let us go now, and then let us cross, yeah. Did you know where you were going before you crossed the border? Yeah, so we had some contacts on the other side, obviously, because of Yuri. He actually, we could not done what we did to the level that we did it without him,

because it's kind of like the hometown guy bringing us there, a ton of doors opened. You know, like if you yourself was like, hey, I'm just gonna go to Ukraine and try and save the world, kind of think it would be difficult. Yeah. It would be really difficult. So we had some guys pick us up on the other side and it's funny. Like I said, we walked across the border, all that stuff that we packed the car with, in hand, in boxes, and in bags, and we're just walking. And we're crossing over and there's this little shack, like a little guard shack, looks abandoned or whatever, and we start walking, guys, I, hey, you're creating a guy, what's

this guy doing? Let me see your papers, all this kind of stuff middle of nowhere checks out papers we're like all right now what and he's so funny it's like all right now you just go to Ukraine all right I guess we're here right so two guys coming a van to pick us up and it was kind of like they pull up the van door open get in kind of deal we don't know these guys you're in those of these. We don't know these guys. Yuri knows of these guys. Turns out one of the guys is named Sasha, just an incredible human, right, and page it for his country. He has this kind of underground network of,

it's kind of like a humanitarian group. They do a lot of humanitarian stuff for people, for the army, getting stuff out to the front, and helping with refugees, kind of getting them to that area and helping them get to the borders, people that are leaving some of the areas where the fronts are. So he came and picked us up and you know, you get into the van with these guys, I don't speak Ukrainian, just kind of like, alright let's go if we're doing this. You know I didn't know how influential and how incredible he was at that time, but yeah having a contact like that was great. From there we

are, we went to the area kind of like our AO, that we were operating out of into his. And I can mention the place now because they've since moved in the last few days to a different location, but it was a window and door sales place, like patio doors and windows. And they basically just turned it into this incredible network, like underground network, to support the war effort. And, you know, we get to the town, we went there, we went to our safehouse, kind of got settled then, and, you know, started working the plan from there. Wow. What kind of, when you, did you see kind of who was leaving the border? Was it a lot of women and children? Was there a lot of fighting age males leaving? Yeah, there's not a lot of fighting age males. It was mainly women and children. The males there are required to stay. I think there are some exceptions. I think it's from 18 or 16

to 60. Is the age that has to remain in country? They all are joining the army right now. Many are just doing it You know, they don't have to be told. They're they want to do it the same way If something happened here you and I wouldn't just sit by right. I mean, it's their patriotism is incredible But yeah, that on one side to me That's that's pretty incredible, heroic and patriotic. But the families are being split, right? Because the women and children are getting out. And even the women and children that are staying

in some of the areas where the front is not, like where the actual fight is not, they're still sick, they're family still broken. Because the men are all going to the front. What how are they are they being put in camps? Where are they staying? Where are they doing? Yeah the refugees. Um some of them are moving so let's say that the fronts are more kind of out east let's say. So as they move west some of them are going to towns that are not affected heavily by the fighting yet, or that aren't as bad of a threat as where they're coming from. Some of them that are actually going to the borders, and this is kind of the problem

they're having now and what I've heard about how we're looking at it as Americans. So let's bring them to America. Let's bring them to other parts of Europe and help them. That's fantastic idea, but these people don't want that. They want to stay close to the border so that when this clears up, they go back to their life, right? I mean, I'm sure some of them would love to come here, but many of them, again, their husbands, their fathers, their brothers, are at the front. So they don't want to come to Tennessee or Chicago right now. They want to be close to home.

So it puts a lot of stress on those border areas of those neighboring countries because it's not just processing them and moving them on. They don't want that. So you have to, in my opinion, you have to kind of help facilitate that, but it puts a lot of pressure on those border areas. Yeah, so they want to be as close as possible. Yeah, I mean, I probably would do, right? Yeah. But we don't think like that, really, we think of it as, hey, let's get them out of there and start them over. Yeah. You know, give them a new life kind of thing, and that's not really what many of them are interested in.

Manchester. That's an issue. I probably just want to end of that. So you're at the underground facility, and what's, and so what starts to develop there? Who are you meeting? Yeah, it was, so to say, the scene of that, like I said, it's this kind of underground war effort thing. It kind of reminds you of like a World War II movie when you see that kind of stuff going on.

The whole town is involved, right? You have women and children making caminets in the gymnasiums. You have everybody helping out. Anybody that has any kind of, you know, there was a steel guy there talking to us about making plates and seamstresses helping out with this or the next thing. Doctors, nurses, everybody's helping out. And we go in there and just start, okay, how can we help? We do our med-drop with the supplies. We're explaining to them like, look, explain to them about like an iFat kit.

Here's what you need in there. Here's a box of stuff. You need to make these kits up. Here's what goes into that. And we just start making connections, looking for stuff to do, looking for ways we can help. And somebody mentions about the military. There's a military base in town. And what happened was when the war kicked off, they had about 200,000 people joining the armed forces in a weekend.

Wow. So you can imagine the strain, I mean, if 200,000 people been listed in our military on a weekend, we'd struggle to process all that, right? So they had a lot of guys who had no experience, no training, anything like that, no uniforms, no gear. And we had heard the military had some strain. They set up these territorial defense units, I think most of the people listening to this will have heard of, like the foreign legion thing that Ukraine started, right? Where anybody can come over and we'll arm them and all this kind of stuff.

We weren't in contact with any of that, but these territorial defense units originally were set up to protect local areas. So like your town would have a territorial defense unit made up of people from that town and they would protect the area. Turns out whether I'm going on these territorial defense units are also getting sent to the front. No training, no gear. Some of them haven't even touched the rifle till they get there. How far in are you in the Ukraine? From the border? Yeah. We'll say a couple hours, let's say.

Can you name the town? No, I'll cut. No, just because there's... And the reason why is what Russia is doing right now to these western areas, they know they're getting a lot of help from the western areas of Ukraine. They know they're getting help from the neighboring countries. So they're sending saboteurs out to those areas to market targets, right? I mean, there's already been some issues where some of the areas in the west, there was

that location kind of close to the Polish border that just got bombed. Because they found out they were training these kind of units there. And, you know, so I don't want to say the area for those kind of reasons. For those people's protection and then for mine as well, because I'm probably going back there. And if they know that Americans are there, obviously that's bad as well. So we found out this army base and basically just went knocked on the door and told the guard like, hey, here's who we are, who's in charge, get us in front of somebody who's

in charge. So we ended up in front of this colonel and he was a tank commander. Now he's dealing with all these infantry type guys. The major that was working under him was in the army a long time ago. When he was done in the army he was a salesman for aquatic type stuff, like aquariums, fish and aquariums. All of a sudden, ominous, ominous, you're a major in the army now, right? Running these guys and he was an artillery guy. So we go in and we told the colonel, we said, look, we're going to be here for the next six amount of days.

Here's who we are. If you need any help, let us know. We were not going there to train Ukrainians. We weren't going there to fight. You know, we were going there to take your home. And this is kind of part of how everything spiraled and we got more involved and more involved. He was very kind of skeptical of us at first. I don't think he thought we were up to anything like he didn't think we were Russian saboteurs or anything, but he

just kind of was, who are you and why are you doing this? And he said, I'll tell you what, we're doing defensive positions around the town and around the base. We know what we're doing, but we'd like some advice on what we've done. And if you have any advice on improvements we could make. Let's talk about it. So we start showing us around the base. We like this. We would add that.

We'd get rid of this. Kind of giving them our opinion on it, like a site survey. And he says, after that, he's like, okay, so he starts showing us surrounding buildings in the area that they have kind of taken over and set up defensive positions in. And I was kind of impressed with that because you couldn't tell, I mean, I hadn't been in the town that long,

but you couldn't tell they were doing this stuff in these adjacent buildings and other buildings. And then some other places, like with the video we had with the clock tower and that kind of stuff. This is the one where you're setting up a sniper HUD. Yeah, and like a, you know, OPE kind of thing for them. Hey guys, let me take just a minute to tell you about our sponsor BetterHelp.

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Alright, so when you're in the Ukraine and you're in a church cathedral steeple, trying to look at sniper positions and there's pigeon-shite everywhere Part of the deal The top of this tower It's a pain just get up here I'll be back So we're on top of the We're on top of the observation post sniper position for the Ukrainian army in this town. And they're getting set up for a potential attack.

So we're helping them scout some positions. And, hey, Zach, come over here. And take a look at some good vantage points for them. And, you know, we're looking at that stuff, giving them a good site survey, helping them out, changing some stuff. And he's like, okay, he kind of built in trust with them then. And again, in the beginning, he was very short with us. Very wasn't being rude, wasn't being dismissive, but you could tell.

He didn't really know. And then by the end of doing all that site survey, he's like, okay, I think these guys can help. He goes, would you guys be interested in training the men? Yeah, right. We'll help you. Start asking about experience, this kind of thing. And he kind of was like almost embarrassed and being like, look, no experience, they don't know what they're doing.

We don't really know how to train them. It's not our thing, but we have these guys and if you can help. So okay, come back tomorrow and we'll start training them in, right? So we connected us with the major and then that was that. So we did a lot of our training in the mornings. How well equipped are they? What are they? They're not. I mean we went there on the first day and it was like a movie right we show up to hard charging Marines ready to train these guys and you at fathers and sons you at old men you had no people who never would have joined the military never would have set up to fight I mean they're there with the detest track suits on and gym

shoes and it's three inches of snow and 25 degrees. And, you know, because they just didn't have enough uniforms. And our thing was like, okay, what these guys are doing is pretty incredible. Like I said, you and I would do it, but it's still incredible. It's incredible that you have to do that. Yeah. Join the military because people are invading your country. So, but then imagine you do that, you know, you served. Imagine you served and you don't have a uniform.

You know what I mean? I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean,

I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean It helps make you be who you are as a warfare, you know. And they didn't have that. Some of them, they didn't have weapons. They don't have doosk here. They don't have chest rigs. They don't have armor.

They don't have eye facts. They don't have boots. They have nothing. Some of them have rifles. We had guys that were using icicles during training. icicles. For mock rifles. Yes, wow.

Stecks. A guy used a waterball. Could you imagine doing a workup to go into deployment using an icicle as your rifle? No. I mean no, I can't. And so you're standing in front of 35 guys on that first day And the only thing they have is a piece of yellow ribbon tied around their arm to show that they're Ukrainians when they're outside of that identifying each other. And the Russians are wearing red, red, because some of them don't have uniforms either. So they wear an array of red piece of ribbon. The Ukrainians are wearing, yes, like, paintball in the back yard. The Russians don't have uniforms? Some of them know because they've had a lot of conscripts.

It's not all Russian army, they have a lot of conscripts that they're using from, from some of the southern and eastern regions of Ukraine that the Russians have basically been there since 2014. And they're bringing people in from all over. Syria, you know. They're bringing people in from Syria. Yeah, there's Chechens there. There's Chechens on both sides as well. So one of the ways they're identifying Chechens are probably the most nasty warfighters now and a man. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean we dealt with some of the men in Iraq obviously as well, right? I mean, whatever something's going on, those guys pop up, but very interesting for me to learn that they're actually on both sides. There's Chechen fighting for Ukraine and fighting for Russia as well. But yeah, that's what they're around. We've ribbon on their arm and no gear, you know, and it's cold and we're going to be out here training and we were we were pretty tough on them. How many how many what is like demand a gun ratio? How many men are there? How many guns are available for this particular? So we trained we ended up training two different units. One was a little more equipped than the other because one was kind of was fed from the actual army. The other one was this straight territorial defense that was spun up in a couple days. I'd say, Let's say you have a platoon size there, people.

You'd have 10, 12 with them, with no rifles? 10 to 12 with no rifles. You'd have the odd, like PK sprinkled in, but no kind of squad set up, no team set up. Where did they get the guns? They're getting whatever they can they're they're getting them through Kind of logistics supply type stuff, right? Nobody was using like personal weapons or anything it was It's all whatever they could scratch up from the military, right and

You know, or just scrounge and trying to protect themselves. This is why the second amendment's so important. Yeah, no, I mean, it's incredible. And the first day, they're all running around, these guys have no training, they're running around magazine and condition one with an AK, like clear and safe, right, fucking now. Right, like, I'll help.

Yeah, but I'm not taking around here because some guy doesn't know what he's doing. So Yeah, even weapon safety weapons handling. It's kind of like here Sean. Here's a rifle. Yeah, you know Day one we want you're hoping there was the trigger open the game point in the right direction You know, so it was a lot of that and you know, we were tough on them just because of the They kind of gravity the the situation right and it was kind of long training sessions putting them through their paces on stuff, basic stuff, fire and maneuver type stuff, basics of patrol and hand and arm signals, weapons handling, you know weapons manipulation, that kind of stuff. Very basic, like to say

you are I, but it was difficult for them obviously. And they're not in the greatest of shape. A few days ago, they were whatever they were in life, not all of a sudden. And we kind of good caught bad caught that. you know, the same way, you know, you experience that at your selection processes, we experience that our selection processes, you're not really mad at them. You're motivated and you're pushing the same thing that we've seen. And we just kind of naturally good cop bad cop that and I can get pretty fiery and emotional and so Zach was kind of playing the good cup. You know, but it was serious and we had to, if we saw they were losing focus

or we saw that they were getting tired, it's like, Hey, there's no Russians in my country. Right? They're here and you're, and they're not next door. They're here. Take this shit serious and let's get to work, right? Because this is going to. You're gonna go to the front and I always thought like I remember 18 years old, you know, you're at boot camp and this was before 9-11 Nothing really going on in the world, right? And I remember the drill instructors like hey you guys are going down range and in boot camp you have Obviously your infantry, your combat MOS is in there with like supply in there with guys who are you know handing out towels at the rec center for the next four years whatever And you're like come on the guy. We're not going to war kind of thing. There's no war right then 9-11 happens everybody goes

So for them it's that they may be thinking look we're territorial defense We're not going to war we're just helping here And if the war comes here, that's fine, but the war's not here. We had to set that expectation for them, and I'm glad we did, because now those units are at the front. Wow, so some of them still just don't get it. It's like they're in your country,

and you still think. It's surreal not coming here. It's surreal though, isn't it? I mean, imagine right now we're sitting here. Imagine if in New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, the Russians invaded. No. But we're here, right?

It's an unbelievable thing. I mean, think in 9-11, when that happened, you're sitting watching it, it's real, but it's unbelievable. Yeah. So I think, and it was so early, I don't really think they had really hit them yet. They had done this incredibly patriotic thing, they had signed up, and this was before they were, I mean, these guys signed up before. Now everybody's kind of forced to sign up, right? But these guys signed up before, that was even put in place.

So they've done an incredible thing, but they just, you know, the same way you or I, you wouldn't feel the full aspects and the full kind of gravity of that at that time. So we're trying to paint that picture for them, and you know, like a funny story when the air raid sirens would go off every night. And one time they went off during the day when we were training.

And the guys were kind of freaked out, you know, what should we do, should we take cover, should we, you know, they're talking to the major, they're talking to kind of their platoon leadership and all this. And I lost my mind, right? I'm like look we're not here in any we're here in a sirens we're not here in any impacts we're not stopping and going inside and going to a basement for a siren we have to give them a little bit of a chewing give them the whole you don't have any

if you don't hear any impacts I don don't really care. I mean we care. But unless that stuff's landed near us we're alright. But this is a life in the Ukraine at the moment. You know if a round line's there we'll go inside. We're training right? Rounds are going to be coming at you down range. You're not going in sight when that's that was happening. So, setting that expectation with them because they're civilians and getting them into that, you know, kind of trying to pump them up, you know, we never broke them down. We weren't thrashing them.

We weren't, you know, making life miserable for them, like we've experienced. It wasn't about that. It was about lifting them up, getting them the right training, so they could perform. Breaking them down was not going to have already broken down. Their country's been invaded. So it was building them up and enabling them to be able to fire and move in the right direction and you know defend their country when they have to when they have to do it. So you know I think we had the ground running training on those guys but we definitely got better at it as

the days went by and you know the two groups that we trained were very different. Funnily enough, the actual military unit that was fed from the military unit. It was a few days in at the war, but they already were starting to get burnt out because their command, their leadership had them doing patrols, standing watch, training, and they were not living in the best conditions at all. And they were pretty burnt out. So even talking to the leadership and saying like,

Hey, think of the threat level where we are right now. Yeah, they need to protect the base. They need to be patrolling properly, like, centri-type patrols, and they need to be standing guard properly. But you can't be burnt on them out right now, because by the time you get to the front, you know, they're going to be gassed out. The actual volunteers will call them. They were more motivated, more inspired, more energetic than the regular army, guys. Wow. Which was pretty interesting, because we had to train them differently, because

of that. You know, we had to treat them differently because of that. So yeah, that was pretty interesting. I mean, the first day we went to the regular army base and we met a captain there. We met the major there. He was pretty locked on, but, and you could tell his head was spinning. He had a lot going on.

And he actually cut a meat and short with us to go see a friend of his that had been shot on the front and we were kind of thinking like what do you mean you're leaving your men to go see your friend at the front? No, you know what I mean if it was a you know a no five that just up and leaves the guys to go see his buddy we wouldn't do that here right I mean that's terrible your friend got shot. Hopefully he's okay Everything good, but you don't leave your guys to go do that But he did I mean it was just interesting, right? That's something I hadn't seen before

And we worked with a captain there and the first few days we were there You could tell that guy was just wrecked so stressed out so strong out You know, you know, you the way the world's on the guy and we just told them, look man, your guys need you to be effective. You need to get your sleep, you need to, you know, get yourself, you need to be eaten and by the end, you know, the good thing was that we're very receptive to whatever we told them. And on the same with the defensive positions, we'd be in town the rest of the day working our humanitarian stuff and our contacts on our network and all this and you'd see the

guys fill in sandbags, building bunkers and changing some stuff up and all this. I mean they took what we said seriously and right away got into action with the stuff. You know when we left a group in the morning, we would tell the officer, here's how you need to train the guys the rest of the day, and basically gave them their training plan for the rest of the day. Here's what we want you to work on for tomorrow, and say like, we'd have you demonstrate it, not let the rest of the guys do it, practice it,

but you need to work on this for tomorrow's the first thing we're going to do when we come back. And we did that as a way to evaluate how well they were training. Because if we came back the next day and they look like garbage, you know, if you showed somebody how to clear a room and said, okay, practice as something back tomorrow. And you come back tomorrow, let me see it. And it was garbage, you know, they didn't practice the day before. So we put these kind of things in place, just the number one help us see where the guys are at, and to make sure that they were training. And we're not getting paid to do this. We're not,

we didn't go there to do this. You know what? We just saw that need and tried to plug that hole. Yeah. You know, and we, you know, we, I'm proud of those guys. Because in the days that we were there, they got exponentially better. You know, and by the end I told Zach I said, look, if something kicked off in this town right now, I mean, they're not good.

Don't get me wrong, right? They're not good. They're not like if it was you and I running and gunning. But I'd stand with them. No, the day one. I mean they got to be a hundred times better than what they were. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and it was like day one, quote, geez, right? But by the time, and I think you've seen some of the videos, the fire and movement stuff we had them doing, some of the IA drills and all that. You know, for contact, we had them breaking contact. We didn't get too crazy into any ambushes and all that kind of stuff. But as far as fire and movement goes, they were pretty locked on by the end of it, communicating. You know, it was impressive. They took it,

both groups, took it very seriously and got to a decent level and You know, it's kind of emotional because when we left it was like two three day. I've only been back for like a week Two three days after we got back we got word to That unit the one unit went to the front already Wow, and so you're like man, it's It's pretty heavy right because I think if we weren't there The army unit went to the front? Yeah, and if we weren't there and didn't train those guys Imagine how they would have been going to the front. No. You know, at least now they had something. How far were you guys from the front?

You know, at least now they had something. How far were you guys from the front? We'll see, I don't know, maybe... Five-hour drive? The five-hour drive? Oh, well, to go way out, you see, I mean, four or five hours. Okay. Now, I mean, the sum stuff's moving. Obviously.

And how long ago was that how long were we there today today is March 18th so we were there in the February through like we got back the ninth okay of March so well we got done with them ninth of March with with those units. So yeah, a few days after that, we'd say, beginning of this week, we got word that they were at the front. Wow. Still with no body armor, no helmets.

They're going to the front. Going to the front. Yeah, hopefully, you know, God willing, they had some gear like that for them front. Yeah, hopefully, you know, God willing, they they had some gear like that for them there. But these guys were on around with AK mags and their pockets, you know, I mean, could you even imagine training without a gear, let alone, you know, and we, one story that happened at the kind of the underground place was He said look there's a team of seamstresses in town. They want to know how they can help And my partner he had done some R&D for some nylon companies since he's been out

Designed in different things and and he actually tested some of them with the Marine Corps some some products So he's like hey, let's see if we can get these seamstresses to make chest rigs. So we, we start designing this chest rig, showing it to the seamstress and she's kind of looking like, never made anything like this before, but let's give it a crack, you know. And she comes back the next day and it kinda was a disaster, right? It was not up to scratch at all. It was a prototype, but it was terrible, right?

Good effort, but no. So, and I remember in Iraq, when we were doing vehicle-borne stuff, I was often in the turret. And so, I kinda went slick with gear when I was in the turret right My gear was all down inside the inside the gun truck So what I did have though was a bandalier one of those old-school bandaliers Slinging it over right with the three mags in there

So I said maybe we just make a bandalier She you know and so we designed a bandalier and she comes back the next day and it was fantastic. They were worried about moving obviously so it was slung across and it had to tie around the waist as well to secure it so it's sitting on your side. Obviously stuff you could use in a vehicle as well. Remember training in an inside a vehicle. So we saw it, we loved it, and we have pictures, right? And you can show those.

We took it to the carnal, and we walked in, we told, he didn't know what we were doing, that's we told them, hey, what do you think of this? And this is a guy, again, the world on his shoulders. He has all this stuff going on in his town. Imagine the stress of that guy, a carnal during wartime, right? And he just lit up like a Christmas tree.

He was so happy. And so we went back and we told everybody, we said, look, make as many of these as you can. 25 people, and she just started bursting out crying. And she goes, and it's very emotional. She was like, I can't believe that I'm gonna have such an effect on the war. Wow.

You know what I mean? I mean, tears. You know, I'm crying about that. Because she just broke down and something she made with her hands, these guys have nothing. But now they have that because of her and her team. And so they made videos, I'll see if I can get you the video of them actually sewing them.

Sewing machines, it's not commercially produced, right? Sewing machines by hand making these bandaweers, they'll grow, I mean, fantastic. Nice kind of same material like our camis are made of. Pretty heavy, they'll be fine, they'll be good, but those guys are using those at the front. Wow. So they went from AK mags in their pockets, at least now they have a piece of gear. Yeah. You know, so, and that's why we need companies, you know, when I was in the Marine Corps, there were a lot of, you know, you had your black cop, you had some of these aftermarket type nylon companies that make incredible

gear. Nowadays, my goodness, I look at some of the gear or somebody tells me about some of the gear that's out there, not only, man, that's fantastic, right? Make sure you want to go and list again, just to use some of the gear that's out there. Not only that's fantastic right make make you want to go and list again just to use some of that gear right and I know many of these companies are started by veterans who have used or needed this gear and everyone talks about hey we're doing this for the end user we're doing this for the end user. We're doing this for the end user. Well, you know what? These guys are the end user. And they need that. They need that stuff.

And look, I get it. It's a business. I get it. The pandemics happen. It's tough. I'll try and raise money and buy a cost or whatever. But if any of these companies can donate, it's going to the end user, like the real end user, who has nothing else. It's not like, hey, I have this stuff that

supply issued me and I just want better kit. It's not that. It's these guys have nothing. Yeah. You know, so and there are some guys that have already contacted us, like the guys that GBRSS are putting something together to try and help with some gear, and you know, those guys are incredible and that's going to be great if that pans out, but they need more. We need big companies. Yeah, we need companies, we need, and like I said, we'll figure something out, you know, I'm not saying give everything away.

If you can do that, that's amazing. I understand, it's business, right? We'll try and make it happen. We have connections to diplomats in that country and some high rank and officers that they know, it's a desperate need. If we can get these companies money we will, if they can donate, that would be incredible as well.

This is anything too. This is this is play carriers, this is camis, helmets, flashlights, I-facts, boots, socks, all this kind of stuff. We have the pattern for the camouflage uniforms that they have. I think it's mm-14 is the pattern, I think. So if anyone can mass produce tops and bottoms in that pattern, that would be fantastic as well. They don't have uniforms. And like I said, something as small as a uniform makes a big difference.

Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Oh, boost the confidence. Exactly. And, you know, same with any kind of gear, anything. If you're a company there now, gloves, gloves everything, you have, you have, you know you're not gonna move.

Hey, this product just didn't sell, nobody, hey, maybe this is a product, something you came out, this is the older version, these guys will take it. You know, I'll take it. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, I'm not, I'm interjecting here with a plug, but like, get hold of me if you're one of these people.

Now, you can really make a difference to these guys, because, yeah, it's pretty incredible what they're doing with what they have as well. Well, plug whatever you want, that's why you're here and that's why we're doing this show. So, on that note, let's take a quick break. When we come back, I want to talk about some of the diplomats that you were talking to, and I want to talk about some of the intelligence that you gathered while you're over there. I'm what's actually happening on the ground in the front. Sounds good.

All right. Alright Mark, so we're back from the break. We're going to talk about, you talked to a number of high level diplomats. We're talking about the Ministry of Defense, correct? Yeah. So let's go into some of that and let's let's go into some of the intel that you're getting about. What's actually going on on the front? Yeah, so we how we got connected with these people was we built quite an extensive network. We had a lot of like good connections to a lot that was going on in country. We kind of

happened to fall into it. We did some work to cultivate that a bit, but we just kind of met the right people at the right time and it opened up a lot of doors. And when you're doing something like that, you take advantage of those opportunities. So when we, or when we spoke to the diplomats was, we were leaving on our way home. I'd crossed the border and was driving through the neighbouring country to get back to the airport, to the home, and we get seven hour drive, a couple hours and we get a phone call. We want you to meet at the embassy in this country, the Ukrainian embassy in this neighboring country. Okay, right? I mean, let's go, right?

Zack said, hey, they want us to go there. I'm like, all right, but as well as this as well to what we've been doing, you know. So we go there, we met up with the contact that we had and then we start sitting down with these diplomats. The first was, we'll say she was involved in, we'll say like civil affairs type stuff. Very concerned about refugees, she was dealing a lot with that and our point of speaking to her was the logistical chain. Obviously, I'm sure many people are familiar with, hey, sending stuff to Ukraine, saying, don't need all this kind of stuff. It's coming from neighboring countries, all the neighboring countries. You can't send anything directly to Ukraine right now for obvious reasons. There's massive

logistical issues getting any kind of supplies in because of kind of bills of lading and manifests and just how all that international... Red tape? Yeah, all that stuff. So we were kind of telling her, she was asked asked she wanted to know from us What we saw on the ground and what people need so that she can better Manoeuvre in those channels Like by law right and by regulation And it's very messy. It's very difficult We had we were in contact with a lot of people, other NGOs and just a lot of

people who were really motivated to try and get supplies in country and that could be anything from, you know, bullets and band-aids type stuff, gear for the guys, down to diapers for kids and war, right? to diapers for kids and war, right? And it's just very, it's very muddy on getting that stuff. So these organizations in America and around the world are very motivated to do it. And I'm not saying if you send a box of stuff, if you do a fundraiser in your local community for Ukraine, and you get boxes of stuff, and you send it to one

of these neighboring countries, I'm not saying it sits on a warehouse somewhere, but it might be sitting on a warehouse somewhere. You know, I mean, that's tough because it's tough for me to think about that because like I've been there in Ukraine and I see the need for this stuff. And I obviously know, especially Americans, how big our harps are and how big our hearts are and how motivated we can be and how actionable we can be when people are in need. And you know, that warm and fuzzy like, hey, we donate. There's a sticky sight to that on the other end.

And so, we wanted to meet with her or we were lucky enough to meet with her to try and clear some of that stuff up and It was very circle talky because You know, can we do this can we do that can we make this happen can we have that happen and God bless her she's trying her best, but there's just a lot of roadblocks for that kind of stuff we have a network where we can get stuff to those, to a specific border and we can have our guys pick it up at that border, so it'd be like you handing it to me.

Okay. It's not done through any red, I mean, and you say yeah, but that's gonna be much smaller in scope, but it's not. We can do this with big 18 wheeler trucks. We can do this with, we have a network for this. Right now they are in the process of taking some airports that are close to the borders in these neighboring countries, shutting them down to commercial travel and to things like that

and using it simply for humanitarian type action, which I think will help because you're you know some of that transportation stuff is where the red tape is going from you know plane to truck to border crossing over and how all that goes I'm not a big logistical person but I'm obviously living some of this out now and see the red tape to me. It's like let's just do it. You know what I mean? It's frustrating. So they're trying, hopefully some of that's been cleared up since we had the meeting with her, but these are some of the problems that they are having, our solution is to use our network, right? And can I do it the old fashion way, you know, getting the elbows knees dirty and getting

it done that way? Because some of the other ways are more challenging. We're still working on those other ways because, and they are getting supplies in there. I mean I'm not saying they're not. It's just that a lot of it is very sticky and it's ever changing. So our network works and you know we're trying to lean on that as heavy as possible. One because it does work and two because hopefully if we can continue doing what we're doing getting stuff in, they're like we just got hundreds of turnip kits in our way, which we tried to get the turnip kits in another way and it was just a nightmare. We're hoping through kind of a validating it that it becomes an example, right? And that somebody sees it, someone else sees it,

someone else sees it, and, you know, I'm not saying that's the best way, but it works. And the guys that we have on the Ukrainian end, these two guys, Max and Sasha, I mentioned Sasha earlier, they're incredible with what they do. And they were just two regular guys, Patriots for their country that are literally moving stuff from all over Europe, from the US, from places like Holland, from Italy, from

neighboring countries, these kind of places and they're getting it to their little area, to their little shack, you know, their little kind of underground shack. It's not a shack, you know, you're saying and supply shack and moving it to the front. There's networks of priests that they use that are moving back and forth, secret priests that are moving stuff back and forth. And this goes. So you've set up a red lines. It's unreal. And here's why it works that way is, you know, you and I were in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, where the war is pretty 360. It's all around you. This is very old school.

This is very, there's the front line, and then there's all the lines behind the front. And it's moving things back and forth to the front. And it's like stuff you read in history books, you know, where to work, two-stip stuff. It's that kind of warfare. It's very conventional. Yes. So setting up these kinds of lines is it's very important and it's I'm sure the military is doing it obviously right.

I'm sure there's government types that are doing it, but these civilians over there are doing it. And, you know, I'm motivated, it's as in, can be pretty strong. I mean, you know, military government, there's a lot of hurry up and wait, there's a lot of red tape, there's a lot of, well, we can't do this just because we can't do it.

These civilians, they're not putting up with any of that. They're getting stuff done every single day and it's very impressive. Like I said, we walked into that establishment that they had and it was day three or four of the war. When we walked in there, you could swear they were doing that for a year. Everything was so well oiled, people moving left, right, center. This stuff's coming in, this stuff's going out, this stuff's being organized and distributed. These people are moving through, like we were helping a lot with moving people, refugees, people that are escaping the front. Kind of, we did a little processing thing there, we didn't review as many of them as we could to gather and tell them what's going on at the front, what's going on in those towns, what do the people need. And those interviews are tough, right? Because, and I think, you know,

I have some of those, I've shared them with you, they're tough because that person, let's say one example, there was a man that left an area under a heavy combat with his wife and daughter. She's 13, 14, the daughter. And he's pretty shaken up, right? And you're sitting there and you're poking him for information. And, you know, he's, he's not involved in this, he's not in the military, he's not a government guy, he's, he's just a guy. But he's an intel source. If it's me talking to him, I'll poke out, you know, I'll stick the finger in that hole, right? But there's one interview specifically that we have on video where Zach's interviewing him. And I just remember sitting there and, you know, he's doing what a good Marine does, right? He's getting the intel from the guy.

And I'm just sitting there like, shawt man, leave the guy alone, like, let him be, let him breathe, let him fit. But you have to get that intel because then we take that and we use it for those supply lines, we use it for helping get other people out. And that's all done through this network that we've kinda cultivated.

You know, and when we're there, hey, can we do this? Hey, can this happen? Hey, they need this. All right, let's do it. What kind of intel is he giving you? Troop movements, weapons that are being used, what's being hit, transportation out of the city.

You know, like, hey, can you get out in a car? Is there train lines that are working? You know, like, hey, can you get out in a car? Is there train lines that are working? You know during your movement, did you see any Russian troops? What let's go into all of it. What are they hitting? Kind of everything that I don't think they're being too discriminatory on what they hit it's obviously they're attacking some of these big cities. We're talking about it right, the major cities. And are they differentiating between civilians and military? Not from what we

see in our head. No. They're killing everyone. Yeah. I think what I last heard was there's been more civilians killed than Ukrainian soldiers. Wow. So, um, and I'm sure I can't really speak to what's being shown in the media. Like you mentioned, I'm not really following a lot of it. I followed it before we went. And since I've been back, I've been ear to the ground with the guys that are there and that's kind of where I'm getting my stuff from. The media there just to clear up kind of okay yeah well you're talking to guys in country they're just

giving you their end of it from what their media says. The media there because we watch the media every night there, the Ukrainian media, it's very positive, it's very patriotic, obviously it's propaganda, but it's very... It's there to inspire. They're not talking about this many Ukrainians got killed in this town on this front doing this. It's... Here's the tanks that we blew up. Here's the gypsy stealin' tanks, which I'm sure those videos are making their rounds. it's pretty funny, right? These gypsies are stealing Russian tanks. I'll never not laugh at that. It's incredible. It's incredible, right?

Just driving down the street in a tank. Their media is very to inspire the people to keep the spirits up. Yeah. I don't know if I completely agree with that. If it was me, I'd prefer, if it was me putting out that kind of media, I'd prefer it to be unbiased. Here's our wins, here's our losses. Because I think you run the risk of, when you're only talking about the good things your country's doing, if something bad happens, what's war? You're

going to win some battles, you're going to lose something. Something really bad happens. You run the risk of the morale of the people taking a nose dive. I think. But yeah, everything over there is very positive, which, again, I'm not, they're not lying to the people. They're just kind of not talking about. Reporting everything. Yeah, I think they're getting a lot of the negative stuff on Instagram. Talk about it. Talk about it. Talk about it. Talk about it. Talk about it.

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Talk about it. Talk about it. Talk about it. Talk about it. Talk about it. Talk about it. Talk about it. Talk about it. Talk about it. Talk about it. Talk about it. Talk about it. Talk about it. Talk about it. Talk about it. Talk about it. Talk about it. Talk about it. Talk about it. Talk about it. Talk about it. Talk about it. Talk about it. Talk about it. Talk about it. Talk about it. Talk about it. Talk about it. Talk about it. Talk about it. Talk about it. Talk about it. Talk about it. Talk about it. Talk about it. Talk about it. Talk about it. Talk about it. Talk about it. Talk about it. Talk about it. Talk about it. Talk about it. Talk about it. Talk about it. Talk about it. Talk about it. Talk about it. Talk about it. Talk about point. Like out of the drains, out of the sewer drains. There's no water, there's no electricity. It's disaster. Yeah, it's humanitarian disaster and they're just level in the city, right? I mean, think it Russia's history, you know, even the wars they had, the two Chetchen Wars they had, their plan is to go in and decimate everything.

Like, carry your whole town, yeah, because that's gonna break you. I mean, it's a war. Yeah. plan is to go in and decimate everything. Like carry your whole town in the pieces. Because that's going to break you. I mean, it's a war. Yeah. But I mean, people don't understand war. They don't understand it. And especially Americans don't understand it.

You know, that we've come up with all these rules. Right. You know, and there are no rules. We're the only ones that follow the rules. And you know, it's very funny. I mean, you've been there. You've done it. I've been there and done it. We follow those rules. Yeah. Those rules do get gray sometimes. And you do things that sometimes are off the reservation a little bit. But by and large, we're not attacking civilians, right? I've never seen anybody attack civilians

when we were in a racquet and they're like that. We don't attack or destroy towns just for the sake of doing it, right? I mean, but that's different there. We'll... They're there to win. They're there to take over a country. We follow these rules and when one mistake happens

God forbid it's everywhere and it's like you guys are shitbags Hey, look a mistake happened. I get it. We don't we're not in the business where we can afford to make mistakes But that happens. It's war It's not like that there. There if there's no rules like you said and that's their game plan the rule is to win Yes, that's not what and Russia's their game plan. The rule is to win. Yes, that's what I'm talking about. No matter what. And Russia's history has been full of, you know, when they start to stall on an offensive,

they can't take a city. If they're taking heavy losses, all throughout their history, it turns to civilians. You know, because that breaks the people. You know. And that's going to make the army back off, the opposing army back off, and it's going to, it's going to get people talking.

And that's what is starting to happen in Ukraine as we're sitting here. What are they worried about? Are they, are they, are they worried about the chemical weapon threat? Now I'd say the last, I mean, like I said, we're talking about this real time, the last 24, 36 hours, yes,

because from what we're here in, everyone's pretty much stalled when it comes to Keeve and Harkeve, Mario Port, like all the big heavy front lines, the Russians have been pretty much stalled and are starting to dig in, right? I mean, they're getting blown up, their tanks are getting blown up with javelins and they're putting tanks in defensive positions which now your tanks are just sitting there, at least to me. Look, I'm not a, I was never a general level officer, obviously, I've never planned wars, but that doesn't make sense. So they're digging in, and it's kind of, they're showing signs of this desperation. Their morale is low from everything that we're here, and they're losing.

They've lost more people since the Ukraine war started in 2022. I'm not including everything from 2014, but this year, and the February, to now mid-March, as we're sitting here, they've lost more people than we lost in Iraq and Afghanistan over 20 years. You know, Putin is... This is what I've read, you know, Putin is actually, cause a lot of Russians are upset about what's going on too. Yes. And he is actually cremating the bodies

so that the Russian people don't see how many deaths they're actually, they don't want, he doesn't want his own people to see the stacks of bodies coming back that were killed in Ukraine. So he's actually cremating them in Ukraine and just bringing ashes back, so it doesn't look as devastating as it actually is. Yeah, they've been doing that kind of thing since 2014 and not to bore people with all the history, but there's been Russians in Ukraine fighting since 2014. Secretly, there is some information about this. If you dig, you'll find it.

They're not supposed to be there. Down in the south and in the east, there are military groups and paramilitary groups and militias that have been fighting kind of this secret war, Ukrainian groups and Russian groups since 2014. A lot of people watching this will have heard Vladimir Putin talk about we're doing this special military operation in Ukraine

now to de-natsify the country and all this. And a West Arkham, look at that and go, what you talk about de-natsify Ukraine, their president's Jewish. Doesn't make any sense, he's crazy. He's not crazy. What's happening with that when he says that, that I think he's referring to it, based on, obviously, all the research you can do, where you have to ask the man. But there was a militia battalion from 2014,

down in that area of MarjPaul called the Asof battalion. About 800 of them. Some of them, like if you've heard of the Asof battalion, you say, okay, they are Nazis, neo-Nazis, Ukrainian neo-Nazis. Not entirely true. Some of them were or are of the 800 or 900. And it nowhere near a hundred percent of them. I don't know exactly how many but I know for a fact it's not all of them and that's what he's talking about. So if you're saying you're going to war with the entire country of Ukraine over a small fraction of eight to 900 people in that city. That doesn't make sense to me. Right.

You say, well, okay. And we never saw any neo-Nazi, any white supremacist stuff anywhere in country. We obviously were very observant Marines. We're checking all the graffiti in towns. We're checking posters and pictures. And you know, as you were right, we're checking everything and like going over them, fine tooth comb, nothing. We interviewed many people, spoke to many people, none of that going on there. Again, your country gets invaded in

2014, everybody fights against it. You're good guys and if you have neo-nazi in your country they defend the country too It's same thing would happen here. Doesn't mean it's kind of that saying All Dalmatians are dogs. Yeah, all dogs are Dalmatians. Yeah, right. It's that kind of thing. So I Get it the Ukrainian government. It's a government, it's probably not squeaky clean. Obviously, thank you to some of the stuff we've uncovered, our government's done with the Ukrainian government or that. It's not squeaky clean. But in times of war, and when your country gets invaded, some of that has to go out the window. We're not talking, it's not about politics at this point. So yeah, that whole area down there is being decimated. And people are saying, why Maru Pol, obviously it's down there

by the sea and it's an important kind of location there. But the war's been going on there for the last 14 years. And like you said, there's sneaking bodies back. There are shallow, one-marked graves in some of these areas in Ukraine of Russian soldiers that were there between 2014 and now. And you're like, well, then you get into the long conversation of where they ordered to go there, are they breaking away from the military and just doing ups across the border in Ukraine?

Like, how is all that? That all plays into the war, and I don't think the West is portraying that, right? It's just Russia, Ukraine, NATO, how does that all play out? And we're not getting the full story on the why for all of this. Yeah.

Because I don't think Vladimir Putin's crazy. The guy's been pretty sharp his entire career. I don't think he's a mad man, I don't think Vladimir Putin is crazy. The guy who's been pretty sharp in his entire career, I don't think he's a mad man, I don't think he's nuts. He seems pretty calculated. He always has. I think they've wanted to do this for a long time. I believe in Variety is very calculated and the same with China, he's very calculated. And they don't have to worry about elections and they don't have to worry about power changing.

Exactly. And I think they've had this planned for a very long time, and all they've been waiting to do is just push the button. It's an open and place. Wait for the circumstance where they can't push the button. And they waited until the US was at its weakest point that it's been in a long time. And here we are one year in and they pushed the button. Yeah, I agree. I mean, it has been building up, obviously since before 2014,

but really at that point is kind of like, you know, he was working that plan in 2016 happens and he backs off or backs off of it. He doesn't do this, we'll see. Right? Yeah, he had it planned the whole time. He was just waiting for the weakness and they got it. And they know it might take a little bit and that's why they did it right now. And it's very tricky because along that eastern side of Ukraine, many of those people don't consider themselves Ukrainians. They're

Russian, they consider themselves Russian, they don't speak Ukrainian, they speak Russian, the line divides them, but they don't, they want to be part of Russia. There are local governments, there are police departments, there everything they are within their infrastructure of their towns and communities is Russian. And so that's sticky, right? I mean, how does that work? You can't just give that, if you're Ukraine, you can't just give that away.

They might have to, as part of clearing this whole thing up. But that's, we don't understand that whole side of what's going on. You know, I mean, there were things like this with Iraq and Afghanistan too, right? But I don't think, and like I said, correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not watching a lot of the media here in the US. I don't think though that that is being put out there in the media. It's not.

I mean, I don't watch a whole lot of it either. Like I said, right from the beginning, they've already debunked the media lying about all kind. They actually found one story that they were putting out that was actually from a video game. Really? Yeah, it was from a video game. They were calling them.

There was some pilot they were saying that was running around killing all these Russians in the story. some pilot they were saying that was running around killing all these Russians. Yeah, and it got debunked and it was actually from a video game. Like the character? Yeah. Oh well. And I think they were even using footage from the video game. And that got...there was another thing that happened too.

Though they was like Miss Ukraine or somebody had an AR-15 or an AK or something and they were like, look everybody's armed and it wound up that was like a, that was an Airsoft gun from like five years prior. Something and... Yeah, I mean that's what's good about the internet and the Instagram page and all that is you can get a lot of information very quickly. Yeah, but also you got a lot of that kind of stuff. Well that was mainstream media. Yeah, right there, but Fox News, I believe. But actually,

I'm sure it was all of them, but anyways, I don't even want to get into the BD. Yeah, so they're talking with these diplomats, you know, one thing though, I'm sorry to cut you off. I want to go back to the chemical weapons because that is one thing that's big and they're finding all these labs which I suppose we're pretty irrelevant now. But there is a big and they just came out again today to saying that it's looking more and more likely that there is going to be, he's going to utilize chemical weapons. Yeah, they prepared for this at all and they worried about it. Well, I think there's a lot of worry for it, obviously. And it's very worrisome that, you know, we see that they're attacking civilians.

Yeah. I mean, if you're attacking civilians with tanks and missiles, what's a chemical weapon at that point, right? I mean, it's the next thing in line. It's not. Well, that will demoralize them even more. Yeah, and when you see what those chemical agents are going to do to the human body. it's the next thing in life. It's not. Well, that will demoralize them even more. Yeah, and when you see what those chemical agents

are gonna do to the human body. And you use them before in Syria, right? Yeah, that changes everything. The nuclear thing as well, I mean, he has, and I just researched this when I'll ask a couple of days when there were a lot of talk with the nuclear thing was happening because it was so funny. One morning, I can't remember what morning it was,

but I woke up, it was like 6 a.m. in Ukraine, getting ready to get the day going, and I had like 18 messages on my phone. It was when the day the nuclear plant got attacked. They were actually fighting at the nuclear plant, right? Had like 18 messages on my phone, everybody back home like you guys have to get out, were there right now? They know they're a nuclear thing and all this, it's like barely got the sleep out of my

eyes, I'm like okay whatever, right? I mean it's war, this is what we're doing here. So the nuclear thing though is Russia, we have very kind of strict as far as I know, protocols on when we would use nuclear weapons, right? Russia does have it in their chart earlier, kind of ways of doing their country. It's not like a constitution, but you know, I mean, where it does allow the president, the smaller tactical nuclear devices the ability to use those not freely but more openly than like if he's using it on an ICBM type thing, right? So that's obviously worrisome as well especially the point they're at at the war where they're

taking these heavy losses and struggling to take over some of these towns that everybody thought he's just going to run right in and take over Kiev, for example. It's not happening. They're still there. They're fighting like dogs there and fighting their Russians back. I'd imagine there's a lot in this for Putin. If he loses this whole thing, where does a guy like that go from here? Our president's calling him a war criminal, right? I mean I don't know if that's just rhetoric, but if you start calling people that that's a legal term, international

law type thing, right? So if they pursue that, you know, and then if you're putting in, you feel your backs up against the wall and you have access and permission to use these kind of weapons. I don't know the guy, but maybe those use them, right? And I don't think anybody's really prepared for that. I mean, where does our country, where does NATO fit if there's a nuclear or chemical attack? You know, if it's nuclear and that gets in the air and crosses borders, is that an article 5? I mean, he's, what's Nate open to do?

He's already used him in Syria, did he? Were there any repercussions? No. We've been fighting Al Qaeda, Taliban, ISIS, for how many years do they fall on this? Yeah, but the difference is, if, let's say he does a nuclear weapon and some of that goes over into Poland, let's see. Yeah. You know, is that enough to trigger an article five thing?

I mean, I don't know. They're going to have to play all that out, but they're still going to have to go get them. You're hearing that. That's the point. You're not going to have to, you're going to have to, or you should go and do something about this guy. I'm not one for obviously same put Americans there. I'm not one for saying Americans should be flying air missions there, American pilots. But my personal opinion is, you know, I'm also

not for like at this point where we are today, there no flies on things a big talk. You know, the Ukrainians are asking for it. All the people we're talking to are talking about it. I don't think that's even a thing because if you're having that and it gets broken, you have to enforce it. We're not going to enforce it. It's going to be like the red line in Syria, right? Like, hey, we have a no-fly zone. It gets broken. We're not going to do anything about that. So don't even have it. Don't use it. Don't put it in there and then not do anything about it when it kicks off. But I do think we should be

arming them more, which this week, obviously, steps were taken to do that. A lot of money, a lot of, and I've read the report of what's actually in that aid package, the military aid package, a lot of good stuff, right? But the jets, you know, hey, there's even an opportunity where we're not giving them our jets. Other countries will give them the jets and we backfill the other countries.

I know there's a lot of talk right now that that's offensive action. I wouldn't think flying jets around your own country is offensive. I understand if you take a Ukrainian jet, fly into Russia and bomb Moscow, for example, that's offensive, but having an air capability within your own country is defensive. I mean, I don't agree, you know, giving a guy a javelin and having our intelligence department who have been in Ukraine for over a month before this happened, just in the talks of it, the parallel, the CIA paramilitary organization was there teaching these guys how to use javelins, how to properly use sniper capabilities. And I don't know if this has been talked about publicly or not at this

point, but this has happened. How can you say that that's defensive and given jets to defend your own airspace is offensive? Yeah. That doesn't make sense to me. You know, they are doing a great job with the javelins right now, right? They're taking out a lot of tanks, a lot of aircraft, and that's being huge. But I think we can still do more. It's kind of one of those things like, well, they're doing well, so we don't need to do anything else.

No, they're doing well. Help them out on top of that. Yeah. So, when it comes to the nuclear thing, I think it is the more Ukraine fights back, continues to do well, continues to defend their country puts a lot of pressure on the Russians and you don't really know what they're going to do under that pressure. Is there a lot of chatter between these diplomats you were talking to and the guys on the ground that are, I mean, is this a major concern? We spoke to the defense, the defense diplomat we spoke to was an attaché to the minister of defense at the Ukrainian embassy in this neighboring country.

So basically, the representative of the Ministry of Defense in that country at the embassy. At the time we spoke to him, you know, stuff's changed now with the nuclear stuff. We didn't get into that. He was more concerned with, they needed warfires. They obviously have that foreign legion thing going on, and you're getting all kinds of people joining that. He gave us some insight into that, and he says it's doing well. They're getting some people with experience. But there are a lot of people with no experience. People with very romantic ideas of just going over and helping and not just from America. There's all kinds of countries being involved. He says it's great. We appreciate it. But

he basically said to us, he's like, we need guys like you. He goes, if we, he said, specifically, we need your warriors. If you have any warriors that want to come over here and help, don't send them, don't tell them to go to this international legion thing. You have them connect with you and you connect with me, and we'll get them set up to do their own thing. Because they're very short of trained people obviously and their army in general was heavy outnumbered. What is they want them for? Does they want them to train his guys or does he want them on the front lies,

kill impressions? Both. So we are we're going to be helping a lot going forward with the training. We're looking for guys as you mentioned at the top of the show to go over and train. We're working on how that's going to all work. Again this was not the plan. This was Zach and I stumbling into this. We made some good strides. We worked and so we want to replicate it and we need proper guys to do it. And so we're looking with guys like that. That will be directly done through some of these channels that we're doing. But he also is looking for people that want to go and fight special operators that want

to go and help. I don't know if this, like I don't know exactly his plan for that. I know it's not joining a regular, though for those kind of guys, it's not joining a regular Ukrainian army unit, It's different. I know as well there are some groups of former operators that are over there obviously on the humanitarian side but on the warfighter side as well that are on their own program and are working side by side with the Ukrainian military. Actively engaging. Yes. I'm not going to talk too much about who those people are and where they are, but they are there and the diplomats that we want and need more of that. Okay.

I don't know. I, you know, our government has said it's not illegal to go and do that. it's not illegal to go and do that. Obviously things get gray and get muddy when you're working on an official capacity with their government. You know, we're doing everything through that guy. So it's all kind of above board, kosher, all that kind of stuff. So if anybody is interested in that reach out, and I know for a fact, you won't be put into a regular Ukrainian army unit or some foreign, one of their foreign groups that they have, which are they're doing, you know, it's incredible there are people from all over the world that are going to help. I know some guys are kind of there's been some reports of guys who do that and when they get there they're highly

They've really misunderstood what they were getting themselves into. No, they went there for the romantic idea maybe they're Larger, maybe they're just you know former whatever and just want to go help But when they're there they're seeing what it is and hey, this is not what I thought I was signing up for it's war right yeah but they are appreciative of those guys from all the countries they told us he named off eight or nine countries that they have people going there and I know there are some units like I think there's a group of British guys that are they're part of that foreign Legion but they've separated them out I know there's a group of Canadians where they've done that and like hey now all

you Canadians are a platoon or a you know company or whatever and and they're but they're still doing stuff for the army. This special operation is mission that they're looking for with former operators is going to be separate from all of that. And we can help get those guys in place. Okay. So yeah, just reach out if anybody's interested there. But it's only, you know, there's a vet in process. So you're not going to sneak into it, right? And that's kind of his that was his focus when he spoke to us was the training and basically he said on the training side, how many of you guys can you get to do this? And we were basically how many guys you need and we can see what we can spin up, you know.

Again, we don't really have the infrastructure for that. We're talking about how to do that. Kind of the intake, the orientation here before everybody punches over, but we're working that right now and we're working it with... Are you talking about how to sift through and see who's who? Yeah, and then...

How are you planning on doing that? We have a couple of ways. We have some... Are you gonna take like discharge, like DD214 papers? Yeah, we have a kind of protocol of what we're looking for. But yeah, it's gonna be, we're gonna have to see your papers, with references, all this kind of stuff.

What exactly are you working looking for? Is it strictly special operations guys? Yep, yeah. Yeah, and we're not gonna budge on that right because That's what we've committed to doing and we don't want yeah, but this guy's good or this guy's trained You know, he's done some fed stuff before we're not playing that game. We need that those levels of guys And that's what we've committed to doing. That's what they want. And that's what we've committed to doing, that's what they want, so that's what we're trying to get with them.

Well, why don't we, why don't you just rattle off specific units that you're looking for or specific MLSs? Obviously SEALs, Green Berets, Marine Reconnaissance, our SOC. Tag P. Yes. PJs. Yeah, any injuries. Brainders.

Any of the Air Force special operations. Obviously, medical is a bit component of what we did. We taught them medical classes. Never they have no medical, like simple stuff. Like, body type stuff, you know, to get to higher levels of care. That plug-in holes, turn the kits, that kind of stuff. So anybody on that side, you know, like SARCs, you know, 18 delta type people, you know, Korman, regular Korman, we will not take a SARC for sure. Air Force we mentioned and Rangers yeah for sure.

Got. What about Swig? Yeah. Swig, like take Swig. So as people email in what do you suggest just black out the so scary number and Yeah, for now You know on the initial contact just contact say hey, this is who I am. I'm interested and we'll get back to you with our Kind of protocol and what we need okay, and how we need that right? Yeah, I mean if you just start blowing up my email or your paperwork I'm probably not gonna look at it before I want to Contact back to you, right? So don't worry about flooding with that. Just reach out, who are you, and that you're interested in, and we'll go from there.

So we'll have a vet in process, and the Ukraine will have a vet in process before these guys cross the border, they'll have to go to that embassy, and do whatever process they have that they need to go to their site. And then the facility getting to the border, we have a good network there for setting up safe houses and transportation and all that. I mean, the whole network's there that we have.

So back to intelligence. Now China is getting involved. And it sounds like China and Russia, China and Russia are doing maybe a handshake deal, and maybe China might supply Russia with military equipment. Was there any chatter of that? Was there any fear or any of that going on that you heard of from... No, we... I mean, the Defense Ministry. Obviously, that you heard of from... No way, I mean, FNs Ministry. Obviously that's kind of a new development. I haven't talked to anybody about that.

I think they being so close to Russia, I think they kind of understand the Russia-Chinese connection. It's kind of always been there, right? So I don't think that's a surprise to anybody, including them. But yeah, I mean, that changes everything, right? I mean, I don't think China would give boots on the ground, but China's got a lot of money, a lot of weapons, and you know, a lot of ways they can help Russia.

So I think that does change a whole lot of what's going on. Yeah, there's definitely a shift in power happening. Maybe that takes away some of the nuclear chemical threat, right? So it may be kind of strange to say, but maybe it's good on that side of things, right? Maybe Russia pulls off that or at least tables that right, maybe Russia pulls off that or at least tables that for a little bit, right? Because if you think about it, he mentioned that a week ago or something Putin did, the nuclear thing, and then it's been kind of escalating. So maybe China getting involved takes out off the table a little bit. It's kind of one good thing and then a whole lot of bad heaven China though.

So that's why this whole thing is so complicated, you know. Because then what does our country do? Are we okay with China getting involved with Russia? If we know that it's helping Russia back off some of the chemical and nuclear stuff, are we okay with that? And if we're okay with that, that's dangerous as well. Yeah, I don't think we really have any recourse with China they only are supply chain. Yes so great yeah you start you start kicking that

door in and that could get the heart could come pretty quick you know when it comes to yeah supply you know that so yeah it's complicated it It's very complicated, you know You know on those levels it's complicated, but then again, you know those guys on the front life's pretty simple for them right? that way and it's it's just strange how the whole thing's planning out. I mean The China thing does change everything in my opinion though. It absolutely. It was only a matter of time. Yeah, and it's a way for China to get some of their stuff done without directly having to do it. Yep.

Did you talk to any other diplomats? Just those two... Um... I mean, those are big ones. No, it was incredible. I mean, we were sitting there at that embassy, you know, two Marines who a week ago were sitting at home not thinking of doing any of this and

Now we're sitting there talking with these guys and You know, it was kind of the The echo of the whole Mission that we did there is just sure if we can help us do it. We're in this now, right? And it kind of snowballed. Again, I just go back to, we went there to help a friend go home and see his family. He hadn't been home in 11 years. And this happens and it's just getting him home to see his family. And the next thing you know, we're sitting with diplomats in an embassy in a third party country. You're like, this is crazy.

Yeah. But, you know, we have the ability to help. We kind of have a will to help people, and we're going to keep pushing. At what point did you go forward, Observe? So you went from the Green Bray mission. Yeah. To now you're doing your old job. Yeah. So

honest. We obviously when we were there, people kind of were hearing what we were doing. Um, we were, I mean, we were moving and shaking doing a lot of stuff. And there was a lot of NGOs trying to get there, trying to help trying to get supplies in. Some of it is very romantic kind of whimsical, like, Hey, we want to save the world and all this kind of stuff. Some of it and two seals that were going to be on former green berries and seals have to make that clear I don't want you to think in. If I if I mention that it's former I'm not saying there's a lot of people are there doing anything that we're going to be on

the ground for this team for this organization. So right then there I felt comfortable with like, hey, even if the organization is kind of doesn't have all this ducks in a row, these guys will be good to go. I don't know who the guys are. I mean, I know their names, but I don't know these guys. And we took, you know, Zach and I kind of talked. He was all for it. I kind of had reservations on jumping in and helping because we had our own stuff going on and we had a pretty strict routine on what we were doing, when and how. But they were gonna help us with some supply stuff or they said they could help us with some supply stuff on their organizational level.

And again, it's just that mission, like how you need help will help you. And so part of our day involved, setting up an easy transition for them to come in, getting safe houses for them, locking on simple stuff, like how they're going to eat, right, getting food set up for them, transportation, trans layers, transportation, trans layers, warehouses, further stuff, and trying to connect them into our network, which I'm very protective of because of the people there. I love those guys, right? I love who they are. I love what they're doing. I don't want to be sending them people that's going to mess up what they have going on there because it's like I said it's incredible you have to see it to believe it what these guys are doing and I don't want to just hand over anybody to them so

kicking the tires on that hand off was kind of stressful kind of intricate it's still kind of dodgy we're trying not to manage it because we're not there now right and we're not these are this organization is not us but not to manage it because we're not there now, right? And we're not these are this organization is not us But trying to manage that and so we actually we actually got arrested because of the because of the what we were doing for For them they tell you the story getting arrested So in our a. O we were We were pretty well known and very well helped. Anything we needed, there's a guy for that. Anything in the network, anything in town, hey I need lunch, there's a guy for that, right?

I need a car, I need this, I I need that there's a guy for that this other organization was trying to set up a warehouse for a lot of their supply that was gonna be coming in okay we'll go and we'll recon that for you no problem it's about 40 minutes away from our IO we had been in that town the very first day we arrived in country we went there with Sasha and he made a very cursory kind of connection for us there through the authorities in that town. We didn't operate in that town, we didn't run any kind of, nothing. We didn't do anything to that point. We grabbed the driver.

It was me, Yuri, our guy, obviously he's going to be our Terp and means Ac. There was a connection that we had. It's kind of, you know how it works. It's like layers of stuff. This guy said to this guy to talk to us like again, bad game of telephone. We know that connection was pretty legit. Former intelligence operative US was connecting us through this other group to this contact in that town. Kind of complicated.

We try calling the guy. He says call the guy. He's expecting you to call today. Calling the guy. Calling the guy, no answer. We said to Sasha, hey, do you want to come with us? Because we're going to be, we want you to connect them with these guys for the supply chain to get stuff to the front from this area now. No, I'm busy. I have other stuff to do. Thank God it and go. We get in the

car. We punch out. Still trying to call the guy, still trying to call the guy, no answer. Alright, we they have like an underground place there in that town, we'll look for it, and we'll look for the warehouse. Our instructions were basically find this guy or find the priest, the priest that was working that area. Alright, like two needles on a haystack, go find these guys. It's not how we work, I told Zach right away away I said, look man, we would never run something like this. It's okay. It's okay. We'll be alright. We'll be alright. And not that I had a weird feeling about that, but it's just not how we We were doing a job for another group. We wouldn't have done the job the way they were doing it Right. Yeah, so I didn't I was kind of grumpy about that

But we go and we get there a still no response from the guy. We can't find the place. We're out snooping and pooping, looking around trying to like, if you picture like it's not like this, but like a strip mall where there's a bunch of different storefronts, we're back off the street trying to see all of them by some train tracks and by some infrastructure. We saw some warehouses by a wood mill. Let's go see if any of those warehouses are at the needle in a haystack. You know what? Let's go talk to the mayor. You'll know who we are. We'll tell him what's going on, see if he can connect us to this guy. So as we're kind of driving back around town through the town to go to find the mayor, there's a police car not come screeching in front of us, almost

like almost head on collision with us. These two guys come out with a car, they're almost tripping over their own feet, AKs drawn on us, right? Weapons off safe. they didn't say anything to us they didn't say get out of the car they didn't give us any instructions we get out of the car hands up they start telling us to put our hands on the car at that point and there's four of us and we're kind of positioned on the car I'm kind of the back passenger side Zach is the back driver side Yuri's kind of over the the driver side door and the driver drivers are totally civilian as well probably peed down his leg and These I'm looking straight at the guy

AK-point-8 there's guy behind me with the AK-point-8 and these guys are shaken like leafs. Sean and I'm thinking, as soon as these guys know who we are, we're going to be fine. Right? We're not Russian saboteurs. They're going to know who we are. They've they'll have heard of us and they can call it. They can call anybody that we've been working with, the Colonel, whoever. Right? But these guys are like visibly shaken. Weapon off safe. Gun guns pointed at us, I might

wait a shot here. In 10 minutes or as soon as they can get me in front of somebody to explain what we're doing, we're fine, but this guy could shoot us right fucking here. Yeah. They didn't give it, they didn't search us. They were scared. They didn't even search us, right? Put handcuffs on one of us. They yelled to a guy in a store, convenience store to come out, go into their police car and find other handcuffs. They were terrified.

So they finally get enough handcuffs. They don't have enough handcuffs for me or Zack. They handcuffs the driver in Pururi and the two marines are the ones not handcuffs. No. Another and I'm just looking at Zack like this is a joke. Another cop car comes, we all end up in handcuffs. They get us back to the police station, they bring in the secret service and the Ukrainian secret service and they start interrogating us and talking to us and all that. Obviously our story checks out, we give them our phones, they start kind of going through the phones and they can confirm everything that we're doing. We said talk to the Colonel, blah blah blah. Now, Yuri at this point, he's been our translator and for people at home that don't really understand it's not as simple

as like, hey, just tell me what he says when you're working with a translator, right? There's a there's a way to it. As we're translating with Yuri, it's Yuri telling him exactly what I said, how I said right if I'm pissed off you tell it to him Like I'm pissed off and tell me exactly what this guy says back. I don't want your opinion. I don't want You know you giving him your opinion on what I've said. I want exact. That's how you work a translator, right? At this point though Yuri's kind of just He's not translating. he's talking to them and

that's fine, we're sitting there in handcuffs and by the way they put the handcuffs on backwards so we're sitting there like you know and that's not comfortable at that point when the handcuffs are on backwards and you're twisted up and I'm like and I'd be a last one if they could fix the handcuffs but I'm not gonna push my luck right? So he's going back and forth and I'm just checking in with Yuri like okay what's he saying you know and I'm being quiet and he's asking about our contact who's this guy where Yuri's explaining. Sometimes those by secret service guys talking to us and interviewing us and this guy comes in with the chief of

police. And he goes, is this your guy? And Yuri says, I don't know, we don't know who our guy is. That's part of the problem. We exact said, if you give me my phone, I'll text our other contact and see if they can send a picture of the guy. They allow him to do that. At this point, they know that we're not Russian saboteurs. They start talking to that guy. Are you their guy? No.

Do you work for the... are you doing this kind of work? No, I don't know anything about that. Are you and they say the name? Are you this specific guy? No, no, no. Some other stuff starts going on. Yuri kicks off, gets like visibly like angry and animated. And I say, Yuri, what's going on?

He goes, that's the guy. I said, no, it's not the guy. You just, he said he's not the guy. Well, he goes, no, no, that's the guy. He's been lying about the whole thing. And I'm sitting there in handcuffs, and I kid you not. I could have jumped up and let that guy throw. I was so angry.

The guy thinks he's in a James Bond movie. And the secret service guy's looking at me, laughing and winking and saying, I understand why you're pissed off, man. I was ready for charging across the room to the guy and so we asked them like why didn't you pick up your phone you knew that people would be calling you you were told that by your by your contact that we'd be calling and he goes oh I didn't recognize the number you know it's troubling times I don't want to just pick up the phone

to around the number. Okay, well, why did you lie and say that you weren't who you are? All I thought this was a set up, he said, again, I could have bit his neck, right? I mean, I was, and then, you know, it was all hugs and kisses with a secret service and the police after that and what's funny,

those guys actually helped us, they gave us an escort out of the country when we left And it was cool when they'd secret service contacts through those guys and with the chief of police in that town And they had obviously heard what we're doing So we built a strong contact in that area through this But yeah, that whole thing was that whole thing was crazy and the guys were so scared. The police officers were so scared. They had just found four Russian saboteurs, about three, four hours before they rolled us up. So they thought, this is round two, there's

more. When they rolled us up, they thought we were Russian saboteurs. Wow. So, I mean, just then we had to go and do the rest of the kind of the op with that guy, with the shady guy. And he wanted to be all hugs and kisses and I was like, man, get the hell away from me. We had to go out to this area and recon this whole kind of safe house and warehouse and connect with this other guy and it was as like just I want to get this done right I want to away from this guy and when we got back I said get rid of that guy don't use him again he's scared that's fine

right I get it but he you know now we're gonna be bringing other guys in to work with him for the job and we don't part of the whole turnover thing we wanted to do turnover with that team of ODA guys and seals it was coming in and their organization couldn't get them off the ground at time, you know, 18 hours were there and you can't get these guys off the ground to do some of this turnover stuff which only obviously only they were gonna have the backlash of that right and then they weren't gonna have that warm kind of handover. But yeah, stuff like that, it makes you realize like there's a lot of people now that are just trying to go over there and help. If you don't know what you're doing, we knew what we were doing.

We had a very, you know, I keep talking about our network. We had a pretty good way of being able to do things and we still got into trouble. So don't think you can just go over there and start playing, you know, war hero or humanitarian hero. It's not easy, you know, you have to have your ducks in a row or you're gonna get yourself in trouble. Yeah.

Because those people aren't playing around. There's Russians in their country, right? This is not a hurricane, it's not a natural disaster. It's not They don't know who's who yes, and you might get killed because of some confusion Yeah, and I mean it was it was pretty real. I mean, I knew like I said I knew we'd be fine because of who we were and what we were doing And it ended up being a great we got great contacts out of it But yeah, it was kind of dodgy there for a while, but it was because of that group that, you know, we, so then that's the other thing too.

We probably made a mistake there. We should have called the head. We did have a network there. We had contacts there with the rescue service and with some people there, outside of everything that we were doing with this other group. We should have called the head especially when we couldn't get that guy on the phone. We should have called and said, hey, we're gonna be here and everything would have been fine. So, I mean, you know, that was definitely a

mistake on our end and, you know, luckily it didn't turn out too bad for us. But yeah, it's just as one of those things you have to dot every eye and cross every tee when you're snooping and pooping and doing stuff like that, you know. Because it wasn't our A.O. And we just kind of took that for good. You know, it's one of those things where we took for granted how loved we were in our A.O. And how everybody just helped us and facilitated

everything for us. We could do whatever we want in our A.O everybody supported us from top to bottom. I think we kind of took that for granted when we went for him and it's down the road. And yeah, we just a simple call ahead to our contacts there. We wouldn't have been in trouble then, you know. But yeah, it was kind of wild. And Yuri was kind of upset about it because there was some local Instagram chatter about it and some pictures of us driving around and like the vehicle we were in and all this kind of stuff. And so he was kind of worried about it on a local level. People here know this kind of stuff. And so he was kind of worried about it on a local level. People here and all this kind of stuff.

And it's like, you know, obviously he doesn't have any experience with us. And just trying to tell him like, look, okay, when you go and do this stuff in a foreign country, stuff happens. Yeah. It's kind of part of the game. You don't want that to happen.

I'm sure you've been in situations that weren't, I feel it happened. But coaching him through that was again pretty interesting on a personal level. You know, because he had never experienced that and we had good jokes about it as well. It was unbelievable. So yeah, it's not kids games over there at all.

Older and experienced. Is there any other intel that you picked up? You'd mentioned people getting shot outside of a grocery store, civilians. Yeah, so there's a lot of attacks on civilians happening now. I'm sure some of those stories are making it to our media, right? Especially where a lot of the heavy fighting is and especially where the Russians are starting to run into heavy resistance. This was not happening in the beginning of the war, this is something that has developed and it's not by mistake It's not hey, we thought this was happening. We thought it was a military thing and it accidentally was a shelter or it's not that

You know, there's one story where people were lined up outside the store to get food like a convenience store bread whatever and Russians came there was 12 I think 12 think, 12 people, 10, 12 people, just gun them down. The Ukrainians were starting to mark when this started happening. The Ukrainians started to mark civilians in their center. So, like, if a bunch of civilians were sheltering up in a school, They would mark that school with something. From the, like on the ground so they could see in the air,

hey, there's children here, civilians here, whatever. And those places are basically what happened is the Ukrainian army's mark in targets, civilian targets for the Russians. Damn. And those places are getting hit now. So there's a issue. So the Russians are looking for the marks where the civilians are being held and then killing them. Or they're seeing the marks and not caring, right? And you know, that gets muddy as well because, for instance, the Army guys, both of the Army guys, the units that we were training, were living in schools, right?

That was like, they turned to these schools, there's nobody in the school, no kids there, the schools are not functioning right now. But they were using those buildings because they're big, they have open rooms, they have bathroom facilities and all this, they were using those as like, make shift army bases so I guess on one hand if you're a Russian military commander you can

say well yeah we target the school because it's a military target there's army there that to me is fair game there's no kids in that school, right? The Ukrainian military is not using human shields to house their military. There's no kids in this school, civilians in this school. But if you clearly see it civilians, you should not be obviously attacking those places. And that is a new tactic that they're starting to do within the last 472 hours. They're really starting to do that. Wow. And that's a bad sign.

That's a real bad sign. And Russia historically has been known to do that. So yeah, I don't know where that leads. I don't know how involved we get to try and stop some of that. I'd hope our diplomats are speaking to the Russians and saying, hey, you know, it's not a red line, but don't do that kind of stuff because that changes everything, I think. Yeah, that definitely changes it. Yeah, and there's a lot of that happening.

And, you know, that's going to be a good way to break those people because the Ukrainians right now, one thing that both of that can I still talk about and noticed right away was how passionate the people are for the country and how much they want to defend it. Everybody, you know, I talk about that town we were in, everybody's helping in the war effort. Everybody, right? It's like an old school movie. It's like a World War II story. From the oldest to the youngest are helping somehow for the war effort. Again, I mentioned the TV is very positive and inspiring to the people and they're getting great results, right? They're doing great with the javelins, they're blown up

Russian tanks, the gypsies have all kind of a tank battalion now with these gypsies, right? For stealing the tanks, I mean, it's very rare, rare, very motivational. And I'm sure that's helping the boys on the front give the job done, right? But Russia sees that. Obviously. And, you know, you start attacking civilians, especially behind their stuff. If you notice, they're starting to, or at least what I'm here, I don't know if they're saying this, they're starting to attack these civilian centers behind the lines, behind the front. So with a missile, they're going over the front and hitting people in the rear.

Damn. Which, you're not doing that by mistake. Yeah. If it's at the front and you think you're attacking a certain building and you miss and you accidentally hit civilians, okay, we can talk that happens. But now you're hundreds of miles away from the front blowing up this building

or that building or, you know, that's done on purpose. And that's not good if that's being done on purpose. And that I think could really, you know, I'm talking to some people every day and that's very troublesome for them. That's making them cry as they're talking to me. That's affecting the people, obviously. So yeah, hopefully that gets cleared up and somebody can talk some sense into the Russian is like, look, hey, if you want to fight, fight, right? But don't do that.

I don't even know what to say to that, you know. It's unbelievable. It's, it's, I just don't see anybody holding them accountable. Yeah, and again, we've talked a lot on a couple of examples of this like... It's a lot of talk and here's a good thing, but then also brings a bad thing, right? This is one of those things, because the Russians or the Ukrainians are doing so well at defending their country and fighting the Russians that is causing or it's making Russia use these kind of tactics. So then what do you do if you're the Ukrainians do you back off? I hope the God art, you know, look I don't work

in the government, I'm not a diplomat, but I hope they're not telling the Ukrainians back off so that Russia stops doing this. Yeah, because then you back off, you let them advance. You know, I think, as you mentioned, and we should be a lot tougher on Russia. I mean, I think we should always be tough. I mean, it's tough, you know, I mean, not even just the U.S., but even Europe. I mean, they've allowed themselves to get 40% of their gasoline from Russia. And so, Russia cuts that.

We were in Germany. Germany gets, I think, 100% of their oil from Russia. Yeah. So, I mean, what are they going to do? Nothing. They're not going to do anything. Right. Because they're reliant on Russia.

You know, I mean, and now, I mean, you see our fuel prices. Sorry, we won't even pick up the phone for us. Imagine, they would not pick up the phone. They would not pick up the phone. For the United States of America. Yeah. I mean, and what's funny about this, I say funny. You know, when I, back in my day,

when I was running and gunning I Didn't deal with any of this No, right I was doing that job and you know a trigger puller go kick this door and This patrol that whatever right now Dealing with it on this level It's very different. And like I said, I'm not a diplomat, but I'm working with these people. I'm working with this network. We're doing this job now that we've stumbled into.

It's complicated. It's, you know what, you think, I mean, we think about all the time. Zach and I are constantly checking in. What about this? How does this change things? We just heard from this guy about whatever. You know, my mind's full enough, and now it's full of this stuff.

And, you know, it would be easy. It's not my country. It's not my mission. It is now, but, you know, I could pull the plug and forget that, I suppose. But it's just a snowball, man. It just keeps getting bigger and more involved and changes every day. It's very weird to be on this end of it. Having been on the other end, it doesn't get to interact with that at all.

It's very, I don't know, it's very interesting, but it keeps the head spinning for sure. Sounds like it. Well, let's take a break, and then when we come back, we'll kind of get into your nonprofit and some of the other stuff you've done and done and wrap us up. Alright Mark, so let's get in, we covered a lot on Ukraine, pretty much your whole experience over there, the diplomats, the intel you're getting on the ground. Let's move into your nonprofit, what you guys have been doing, and if I correct me from wrong, but isn't this just now a 501c3? Yeah, so the status is pending, obviously, ever and it takes a little while, but yeah, it started off. It's pretty recent, fairly recent when the Afghanistan pull-up

was happening. I was working with a team, or was working with a team to go over there and help with some stuff over there. We don't have an organization or anything like we do now. And so I was down in Virginia Beach, taking some meetings about going to Afghanistan, came home from those meetings and it was when the hurricane either was about to hit.

So I just got back off the flight, and was sitting and kind of watching TV, getting settled back into being home and was following the hurricane coverage, you know, I like watching that kind of stuff on TV when the disasters come to keep up with what's happening. And my wife at the time was five months pregnant, so part of me was like, how am I going to tell her that I'm going to Afghanistan? She's not, she's not going care, well she's gonna care. But my wife kinda, she knows what she married, you know?

And I always say, I don't ask, I just tell, but it's not bad, I'm not a asshole like that. It's more, she gets it. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? So okay, I'm gonna have to tell her, I might geteler and my dad have a near beaten but have to tell her I was just sitting there watching the coverage and they were talking about the hurricane And I'd never really done any humanitarian type stuff before right and Text one of the guys. He's he's one of the guys on our team. He's a former Albanian, special

forces guy. He's a savage, right? I mean, he's one of those legendary, just savage guys. And a text on my say, hey, what do you think about going down to the hurricane and getting involved right in the beginning, like when people really need help, you know, like just going down there and throwing at the hurricane like when people really need help, you know like just going down there and Throwing out the article and helping people And he just takes back yes

I didn't tell him when I didn't tell him what I didn't say how many days I just basically said you want to go help? Yes So now I go all all right, well, you can't turn a guy like this away. We're going. Rounded up a couple other guys. The same kind of way that we did with Ukraine, quickly, you know, planned to step out the next day, the next early morning. And I had most of it planned with the guys set up before I went to my wife. So I go to her and I say, hey, me and a couple of guys are going to go down to the hurricane. So when this thing hits, we're going to start helping people. She was okay.

And I was like, okay, like she was, well, I thought you were going to tell me you were going to have a Afghanistan. So I was, so she goes on you go to the hurricane so I was easy easy conversation there right and I didn't even tell her about Afghanistan she didn't know why I went to Virginia Beach um I think she had obviously she had the suspicion but yeah so she was very happy to get me out of the door that would have been uh so we went and kid. So we went and we had a plan. We just got in trucks and drove south. That was the plan, till the rain.

Wow. And when we got there, halfway down my wife's sent an app and said, hey, have you guys seen this app? I can't remember what that app is. Basically, was in a disaster area, you can fill out this app, it creates a ticket, hey I need help, I'm stuck, I, whatever, right? And we start looking at it like, hey this thing, we could use this.

Not for that purpose of going and helping those end of it, but we used it to see where the mass amount of tickets are. Excellent. To get what I'm saying, like, we're not going through these individual things and coming and getting your cat out of a tree or doing this or doing that. We want to see where all this shit is happening. We couldn't get into that town. Why not?

Well, I can send you some pictures as well if you want to post them the whole overpass and ramp completely under water to go to this area. It's about 11 miles from New Orleans. Couldn't get there, there were semi-trucks under water. The trailers under the water. And so okay, we don't know what we're doing, we don't know where we're at. Let's go in New Orleans. We went to New Orleans Stop right outside the super dome It was like zombies zombie apocalypse nobody on the streets bone dry Right bone dry the power was out. So everything was kind of dark

And it was very creepy. It was like you wouldn't know the hurricane was there. Obviously we learned that since Katrina they've done a lot to the New Orleans area to protect that from that happening again because obviously that was horrendous what happened there. And in my opinion it seems to be whatever they've done in New Orleans has been to the detriment of some of the surrounding areas because we found a back way into that town that we couldn't get into. It was I think 30 miles out of our way. We had to go around. It was a town called Laplace and it ended up being one of the worst hit areas in Hurricane Ida. We didn't know that at the time. We just saw these tickets were there. We went there, helping some people in the water.

We got into the town, helping some people in the water, and trying to get a lay of the land. The governor was going there to do a photo op. We were on the outskirts of town. Saw this commotion at this gas station, there was a CBS guy there running this CBS guy, but it was easier to tell us this, where can we do this, how is that going? He gave us the whole layout of everything that was happening in that area. And it was like, you know, it's kind of like some of the stuff we talked

about where you create. If you're just doing the thing, you run into opportunity. You know what I mean? The chances of us, if we could have gone off that ramp, the couple hours before, we never would have ran into that guy. You know what I'm saying? So just the fact that we were trying to do stuff. We could have also said, oh, can't get into that town, let's go somewhere else. But you run into that guy, CBS News guy who knows everything that's happening in that area, nepinin his area, he gives us all the information, now we know what we're doing, now we know where to go, who needs help, what can I help the need, and we just start hitting the town, you know, we were. who needs help, what can I help they need, and we just start hitting the town, you know, we were We did a lot of stuff. We were clearing roads for EMS. They were running into problems with

You know, say a fire truck, right, and there's a giant tree in the middle of the road They're not gonna take care of it for a couple of reasons. They can't have that truck go down and they can't get themselves hurt trying to get to the emergency. So they just don't go or they try and find another way. So we say, okay, we'll help you. We'll go on ahead of you and get the chainsaws and start clearing roads and doing this so they can move. Cutting people out of the houses, we had a couple of people trees had fallen in their houses and they were stuck in the house. So we're doing that kind of stuff.

There was a family, old couple, very overweight. I'm talking like four spins, like very obese, overweight. Stuck in the house, on oxygen, all this kind of stuff, and a tree had fallen on their house, massive tree. It got to the point we were cutting, we estimated 12 to 1600 pounds sections of this tree. Oh wow. Love our heads to try and get,

because it was gonna cave their house in. They said, we've just been sitting here in the living room And last night the roof started to cave in you guys have to get out of here and the news guy told us that He said he said look if you see people here You have to tell them to leave like people that haven't left tell them to leave because we can't get emergency services in here or Food or anything to support them so try and get them to leave Well, these people

in Louisiana are very tough people, you know, through this stuff and they weren't leaving, right? And this old couple, they couldn't leave. They were struggling physically to, they would have not been able to. But we're tried to get them out of there like we can't go we're not placed to go and we can't go And we're like all right well Let's try and get the tree off the roof and where it's above our heads. We're up on ladders for time ropes to this thing One bad move and we would have been crushed, you know, so we start doing some of that stuff Getting food and water to some people just what we had We couldn't give people our gasoline getting food and water to some people just what we had.

We couldn't give people our gasoline because we needed it. And we ran into a problem with gasoline because there was one gas station in the town and that turned into like the Cantina from Star Wars as well. It was very rough there because it was the lifeblood of the town. And the gas lines were, I think one day we sat in a gas

line for four hours to try to do a few and we had brought fuel and then it got to the point where as days went by no electricity, there was no FEMA, there was no red cross in that area when we were there. Three, four days go by and people don't have food, they don't have water, they don't have electricity and they don't have gas. Our fuel't have electricity, and they don't have gas. Our fuel supply was getting low, because what we would do is we would, for security reasons, we would stay outside the town on the outskirts and then just punch in to do some work. And then we'd go back. We basically took over an abandoned kidney dialysis building.

We just kind of set that up as our little base of operations and we had a watch and punched out at night and then punched out and did stuff during the day. We're running out of fuel though. I got to the point where if we can't get fuel on this day, we need to leave. Because the closest place to get fuel was 160 miles away. So we're doing the math on how much fuel we have and we don't want to become part of the problem.

So we couldn't get fuel. There was no fuel coming into the town that day. So we had to leave and you know, we had done a bunch of good stuff there but by the as the week went on just society was deteriorating because of no food, no water, no electricity and people were pretty desperate. So we got home as the week went on, just society was deteriorating because of no food, no water, no electricity. And people were pretty desperate.

So we got home, we drove all the way home, we arrived home at like 6 a.m., a couple hours of sleep. And by noon we had a plan to go back down. I just texted the guys and said, let's go back and do like a food drop kind of thing. So we got another truck, a couple of other guys, rented trailers. And we're going down I-55 from Chicago to Louisiana, hitting Wal-Mart's on the way, right? Well I think we stopped at five Wal-Mart's and four or

five different states and we just walked in and said I I said, I need to speak to the manager. Nobody's in trouble, everything's good. Just need to speak to the manager. The manager comes, I said, okay, we need pallets of water. She goes, yeah, there's cases of water back there. I said, look, ma'am, you're saying cases. I'm saying pallets. Okay, so they were fantastic, you know,

getting us all this stuff. And then we went went we're like food. We're taking food. All right. Well, what food? How are we taking food? We decided on the chef boy our D pull-top cans Yeah, of all the stuff they make spaghetti meatballs, right? Oh, he's a cuz it's easy. He pulled the top You know, you need a fork. We just eat it out the can So we rated the shelves. I'm sure that day that we did that to those five wallmarks, if you were in the inventory management section of corporate, you're thinking, you know, the alarms are going off, right? Because we rated everything. And we had raised some money before we stepped off, we opened the GoFundMe. Like I said we didn't have an organization you know we were just doing it through us we had a GoFundMe and people were donating and we have a

you know my Jiu Jitsu Academy and Chicago is large and great people and they did a great job of getting the word out and we you know we were getting donations so but I told the guys before we stepped off I said, this is my thing. If nobody gives us a dime, I'll take the hit. I will be my credit card, right? I'm not asking anything of these guys, except for their time and their effort, you know, I'll put it all on me, but I believe people

would support what we were doing. And they did, it was great. And so we were able to get all that stuff. We filled the trailers and kept hitting the wall marks. And it was funny because again, we're just doing this on personal credit cards. My credit cards are locking up. I'm on the phone with somebody in Indonesia,

somewhere trying to get them to unlock my, because I'm in different states. I'm doing what a criminal would do. We're going to write down the highway into all these different states. I'm doing what a criminal would do. Right down the highway into all these different states. Hitting item limits, hitting dollar limits on purchases and I'm on the phone outside screaming like, on what we need to verify so I'm like, you're not verifying that I'm kicking off right. It was so funny and then we get down there and we went back to that area where the gas station was

because everybody went to that gas station the gas station was, because everybody went to that gas station. A lot of shady stuff happened in that gas station, even with the local authorities, like the police would go inside and get food and all this kind of stuff, but outside people couldn't go in. A lot of shady stuff going on.

You had good people, desperate people, and we stayed there and we did a food drop there. I think we were handing out water and food for nine hours. There was a hundred and six degrees heat index. Damn. And we were non-stop there. And it was great because people were in that gas line. They had gas that day.

And I just walked right into the gas station. I said, here's what we're doing. We're not going to interfere with people getting gas. We're going to set up out by the street and do you guys need any food? And these people looked at me like they couldn't believe it. They had not shoot. They said, look, I had never, I haven't eating all week and she's in a gas station full of food and drinks. It's very strange. Yeah, that's kind of odd. And they weren't letting anybody go into that gas station to get stuff. All the pharmacy like Walgreens type stuff, CBS, we're all boarded up because people were looting throughout the week and all this. Yeah. It was a very strange situation,

but we just sat out there for nine hours and handed food out. I mean, my hands and feet and arms were all swollen, like with the heat and just, I mean, pictures of my hands, it's like my fingers were sausages. It was non-stop. We never took a break and we just did that.

And then when we were done, it was dodgy getting out of there because we only had so much food and so much water and again after nine hours and I saw we were getting low towards the end of our drop and see all the car still and I'm like might be dodgy getting out here and we had to do the whole wrap-ever-then-up and punch you know I would have been nice to kind of sit there and savor that moment, but it was pretty dangerous at that point because people were pissed. I mean, we were handing out food and water, and when we had none left, people were getting angry.

Yeah. Which is, I mean, it's desperation. So then we got out of there and came home and stuff, and I started thinking, I was like, you know what? We have the right type of people. The military guys we have and the support people that we have. We can do something with us. We can keep this going and we can help people. We can do all this stuff that either people can't do or won't do.

In those kind of situations. That was the first one. That was the first one. Yeah. And so my business partners and I started putting some stuff together to try and create and turn it into something. And then we started helping out with the guys from Save Our

Allies, with the Afghans. We were focused mainly on Fort McCoy, Wisconsin. We would do clothing runs up there and take a bunch of supplies up there for them. Spend long weekends up there working in the kind of Afghan villages connecting with people and it was kind of messy up there. You know, what an undertaking that is with those guys. You know, and they've done a fantastic job and it was great of them to kind of, because I came in and I said, look, kind of selfishly I said, I don't want to come up here and

volunteer for Save Our Allies, I don't want to work for you, I want to work with you on the stuff. And they were very receptive to that and they enabled us to do that and help us. And we worked alongside their volunteers and with the team Rubicon guys that were up there with the 8th Second Airborne and there was an Army engineering company, I think, that was up there too. And then some of the State Department people. But that whole, the military, the NGO and the State Department intermingling is difficult to navigate. And again, I don't have a background in NGO type stuff so that was a good way to learn that there's a lot going on

when you start working at that kind of level but that was a great experience. And then we were, so we were doing that and then November came and November was the thing that happened with my daughter, right? So long story, my daughter had a brain tumor and we found out and basically 20 minutes she needed to have the first to two brain surgeries like I would know where. And my wife was eight months pregnant at that time so we start dealing with that and you know at the same time trying to really create something on this NGO site for Overwatch found or what is

now Overwatch Foundation. Obviously I took some time away from kind of being out in the field and and and and some of the hands-on stuff for obvious reasons. Dotter with brain surgery, four years old and then new baby coming. Once that kind of cooled down, we start you start continuing to grow the thing, working on raising money and how to do that properly and effectively, and just creating contacts and all that, and then you create a thankful up top. And so all the humanitarian stuff we've been doing has been through Overwatch Foundation. And you know, it's still our 501c3 is pending.

You know, we have a good team that helped us on the legal side working all that stuff out. And yeah, just looking forward to the future and having that infrastructure within that organization to allow us to do more of this kind of stuff because we have we have the guys that can get it done so let's go you know I mean yeah that's amazing yeah I never thought I'd do anything like this I never you know I never had a plan to do that and it's just working you know we can we can make a difference with stuff and we're gonna keep going with it. How's your daughter?

She's good, yeah, I mean she's, she's incredible. She's probably the best human I've ever met. You know, and I have other kids, but there's something special about that little girl. And she still is in her physical therapy and pushing through all that. And you know, it's the thing that's tough about it is it's a constant thing, right? I mean, you know, I think about, I tore my peck a year ago and I had a year long recovery.

That surgery had to reattach it to my humorous. And I did all the physical therapy for a year but then once it's healed it's healed. It's over right? My pet now is better than before I tore it. With this she can glad willing be great for the next five years and then having for bed something could pop up again. So every when is a when for now, and you don't know for tomorrow. But, you know, and I told my wife, I said, you know, I mentioned this to you too. I said, this stuff happens to people, and it's better that it happens to us than somebody else, because we can take it. You know, it's enough to break people. So I don't like that.

I mean, imagine. So yeah, it's, you know, and the Ukraine thing's tough because now I'm halfway across the world, we're all the way across the world in a war zone. And, you know, families at home and there's heavy stuff happening at home with that, with that.

It's like, you know, why do you do that? Why don't you just stay home with the family? But, you know, part of being a father and you know, is being an example. And she knows that we went there. She's friends with Yuri's daughter. You know, my daughter's four Yuri's daughters three. And she knows that, you know,

dad went with me as dad to help him. Wow that's powerful. And she'll know as we continue to do this stuff and you know it's just a good way to be an example for the kids right. Yeah so yeah so that's where we're at and we're just trying to, you know, it's weird the hurricane thing just kind of fell on the lap and and we're going to continue to do that. God, you know, having for a bit there's any more hurricanes. I hope there never is, but that affects people like that, but you know, we'll be there to help and do what we can and then you create things fell on the lap as well and you know, I

This is the kind of thing we're gonna do when these things pop up. We'll pop in you know Another thing that we're really doing with the foundation is we're using veterans guys who you know Are out or you know, we have a couple guys who are more recently out and it helps some scratch that itch a little bit be it around other veterans doing something that's you know doing a mission that's worthwhile helping people you know we're not running around trying to do anything crazy some of the stuff we've

done's been pretty dangerous but it's not like it's a group of war mongers trying to do something stupid. But I can see some of these guys light up when we're together, when we're doing this stuff and that's pretty rewarding. So as we grow again, same for the Ukraine mission, we're going to be looking for guys to, you know, special operators to do some of the crazy stuff we're doing. Military veterans in general that can help and civilian support people. We have, for the foundation, we have a great group of civilian support people that are very handy, very organized, our goal getters, you know, for those kind of missions, it doesn't always have to be special operations fits. You know, I just want to help that's in general and give them, you know, a little bit of purpose, a little bit of a goal to be able to help people and use some of their life skills to do that, you know. Yeah, man, you're doing, it's incredible.

It's, it's, you know, we're in the beginning, but I think there's something there for sure. I think there's something there too. I mean, just by hiring veterans and, I mean, on top of all the other stuff you guys are doing, that's, I mean, saving lives, saving countries, everything you're doing, and then you're also given veterans who may be a little lost, you know,

because it is tough to transition, giving them a purpose again and something they can be proud of again. And that's another big thing that's not really talked about is how do you find something that you're proud of what you're doing again after you leave. Exactly. The special, the special operations unit, you know? Yeah, I mean, I obviously, you know, I'm not going to get into it right now, but like,

yeah, I mean, I had a struggle kind of when I got done, personally, right? Just kind of dealing with life, dealing with people. What do I do next? And, you know, I mean, you've heard countless stories like that as well, it's difficult. And I suppose that our resources to help, but we don't go and use those resources until we hit the wall, right? So, you know, it's being able to help

with some of that stuff and help veterans. That's a huge bonus that I never even anticipated doing that stuff. We just, hey, let's get the guys that we have and go help some people. And then you see that side of it and you're like, my last thing, it's just, it's sort of a reward snowball for everybody involved. You know, as far as the difference you can make doing something like this. So, yeah. Well, before we close it out, I just want to again say thank you for coming and sharing your experiences.

And, you know, if you're looking to get involved, the links are below, the need guys, the need special operations guys, you need equipment, all those links are below and man it's just it's a real honor talking to you I'm so glad that we could make this happen on such short notice. Yeah thanks for having me and yeah you're welcome it was truly an honor so do you don't want your going back over? we don't know we have a kind of cursory plan right now. We're trying to get funding and raise funds for some of the bigger stuff that we're looking to do in Ukraine.

But yeah, I mean, I don't see how we don't go back. You know, I mean, they need help. So. Well, I think you're going to get a lot of support. So best of luck to keep doing great things. Celebrate the Black Friday sales event at Woodhouse Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram in Blair. Step into a new Jeep that you can count on from the awarded new Grand Cherokee to the capable 2022 Jeep Compass that Jeep lineup won't compromise on power, technology or comfort, delivering confidence and convenience for 29 years.

Woodhouse Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram in Blair is your trusted auto partner. Visit us off highway 30 in Blair or online at WoodhouseChristlerGeepDodge.com. The Bullwork podcast focuses on political analysis and reporting without partisan loyalties. Real sense of day job is sprinkled on our PTSD. So things are going well, I guess. Every Monday through Friday, Charlie Sykes

speaks with guests about the latest stories from Inside Washington and around the world. You document in a very compelling way all of the positive things have come out of this, but it also feels like we have this massive hangover. No shouting or grandstanding. Principles over partisanship. The Bullwalk Podcast. Wherever you listen.