Shawn Ryan Show - #40 Mark Turner - The Russia Ukraine War

Episode Date: November 7, 2022

Mark Turner from the Overwatch Foundation returns to give us an intel brief on the Russia Ukraine War and a brief look at the destruction from hurricane Ian. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://blackbuffalo.com/discount/SRS https://www.bubsnaturals.com (USE CODE SHAWN) https://bullionmax.com/srs https://www.patreon.com/VigilanceElite 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 Mark Turner Links: Website - https://www.overwatchfoundationusa.org/   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hey everybody, back by popular demand, Mark Turner from the Overwatch Foundation is coming back on to give us an update of exactly what is going on in Ukraine. Six months ago, the Overwatch Foundation was basically just an idea. He took it, ran with it. Now he's been back to Ukraine for different times and he's been down to aid with the Hurricane down in Southwest Florida. Ladies and gentlemen, please subscribe, like and comment to the Sean Ryan show that really helps us out and go ahead please jump over to iTunes and Spotify leave us a review tell us what you thought of the show with that being said gummy bears if you're on the email newsletter they're coming back real soon. Probably around Black Friday, but the only way you're going to find out is by signing up

for the newsletter. Anyways, love you guys. I hope you enjoy the show. Happy November, cheers. One last thing everybody, I just want to say thank you for always being there and supporting me. This show and the guests that come on this show. It means the world to all of us that you're giving us this platform and that you want to

hear what we have to say. Love you all, enjoy the show, see you soon. I don't know much, but what I do know is my audience. And I know a lot of you are similar to me. And you probably chew tobacco. I used to chew tobacco too. I chewed it in Afghanistan. I chewed it in Iraq. I chewed it in the sniper hide.

I chewed it out of the sniper hide. I chewed it before the op. I chewed it after the op. I chewed it on night vision. I chewed it after the op. I chewed it on night vision, I chewed it while I was shooting, I chewed it pretty much all the time. And then I realized it was becoming a problem. My blood pressure started rising, what I really noticed was I started getting light-headed when I would do strenuous activities. Now I've come a long way since those days

and I've quit chewing tobacco, but it wasn't easy. You see, I totally get it, the ritual that goes behind putting that beautiful, tasty dip in your mouth when you're doing whatever it is you like doing, when you're chewing tobacco. Now there's an easier way to do it than doing it cold turkey. You see there's this company out there called Black Buffalo.

It's a chewing tobacco alternative. They have cans with nicotine, without nicotine, long cut, and pouches, and they have all of our favorite flavors that we is chewers love like black buffalo wintergreen black buffalo straight black buffalo mint and for you fufu types they have those flavors too blood orange and even peach. Black Buffalo is also a proud supporter of active duty military personnel, US veterans, law enforcement and first responders.

Black Buffalo is also made 100% right here in the US of A. Black Buffalo is not recommended for anybody under 21 or if you do not chew tobacco, it's not recommended for you either. Black Buffalo products do not contain tobacco leaf or stem. Go to blackbuffalo.com, use the code SRS to say 15%. That's blackbuffalo.com, use the promo code SRS to say 15%. to say 15%. What's your name? What's your name?

What's your name? What's your name? What's your name? What's your name? What's your name? What's your name? What's your name? What's your name?

What's your name? What's your name? What's your name? What's your name? What's your name? What's your name? What's your name? What's your name?

What's your name? What's your name? What's your name? What's your name? What's your name? What's your name? What's your name? What's your name? What's your name? What's your name? I'm anywhere, I think you're just trying to like, artificially affect the gummy bear market. So I have to come all the way down here to get gummy bears. They're releasing Black Friday. Black Friday, there's gonna be a big release.

Nice, can we do like a thing where I get first crack at them before anybody else? Absolutely, I got a, I know a guy. Okay, you gotta be signed up for the newsletter to get notified. Okay, because that's all we're gonna, we're not gonna post it anymore. I'll be signed up for the newsletter to get notified. Okay. Because that's all we're going to post. Okay, signed up then. But, uh, but dude, super excited to have you back.

First time you were here, Overwatch Foundation, I think, was kind of more of an idea than a yes, than a reality. Came on, got a bunch of funding. You've been to Ukraine. How many times? Five times now. And how many, it's only been like six months of delivery.

It's still February, yeah. Five times? Five times. Five times since February. And you've been down to Florida for the hurricane relief. Yeah. Once? Twice. Twice already?

I actually came straight here from the hurricane I arrived yesterday and you know God helped the people that had to sit next to us on the plane my feet still smelled like nasty hurricane water and all that kind of stuff so Was able to get here and get changed and take a shower for you and all that kind of stuff so Yeah, we just came straight here, I didn't even go home. That's amazing, man. You know, I just, little background on you for the audience.

Came on, I can't remember what episode, but it was back in February. March it was. It was, was it March? Ukraine had just kicked off. You're already over there training these guys, training local farmers all the way up to Ukrainian special ops, correct?

And you made such an impact over there that there's a very high demand for Overwatch foundation in Ukraine. And I think you have teams over there. Do you have team right now? Over there. Our team actually would just finished up. Our fifth trip in Ukraine and

two of the guys flew straight from Ukraine to the hurricane. Wow, so I mean it's you guys are working your asses off. It's and it's solid work. You know, I just wanted to say, man, to start and off, there's a couple things I want to bring up. One is obviously the Ukraine-Russia conflict is very political, and I really respect the fact that you've left all the political bullshit out

and the only thing that you and Overwatch seems to be interested in is human aid. And I think that just speaks volumes. On top of that, we had a great conversation at dinner last night. I'm where you guys are at now compared to where you were. And it still blows my mind that you're spending your own money to send all the supplies and everything that everybody donated. And there was a massive influx of both money and gear. And so I want to, I definitely want to thank the audience for that. Because of you guys,

Mark and his team's gone over five times now. They're doing hurricane relief down in Fort Myers, Cape Coral, Sanabelle, Captiva. And you got some really eye opening footage on that. And so anyways, I want to donate, if you want to donate to Overwatch Foundation, the links are in the description. Right up top, your money is definitely going to a good organization. You can actually see the impact that you're making.

So thank you for that, man. No, thank you. And, you know, I'm going to take some time at some point during all this to talk about what the people have done because, you know, there are people that are literally just writing on email or faces when they send a message here, there with pictures that have done so much for us all the way up to people who are actively involved and donating and gear or money or whatever, it's just been incredible. So, you know, it's been nuts. We have an amazing audience. No, it's, I can't even, it's hard to get worked, you know,

to describe like how incredible it's been. It's awesome, man. Well, you don't have to, because your actions are louder than words. But, here we go. All right, here we go. Let's see. Any guesses? Oh, I don't have any guesses. That's a different size for the last time. I hope there's gummy bears, but oh, nice. There

is. There they are. These have to get these. There they are. These are going right in the freezer. I've already had plans, right? This bag will be eaten before I get home tonight. These ones are going on the freezer when I get home. Legal in all 50 states. Exactly, yep. Not that that matters, because you're familiar with it anyways. But, fantastic.

And look, I'll tell you, if you're at home and you're like, what's the deal everybody that comes on? So worried about these gummy bears. Listen, these are not like those cheap gummy bears that you could just get from some co-packer and fire into a bag with some branded on it. They're really, really good gummy bears. And I'm kind of a gummy bear snob.

Like I am, I really, I don't eat a lot of candy, but I like gummy bears, right? They go good with my whiskey that I drink all the time, right, freeze some gummy bears, sit and drink some whiskey and just pop a couple gummy bears in. And so I'm picky about my gummy bears. You know, and I gave you a chance last time, and then I told you, I was like, man, I'm impressed with you. So get them, right?

I mean, you don't need me to help sell them. They sell out in no time. But if you're out there and you've been on the fence about the gummy bears, cool the trigger because they're fantastic there and you've been on the fence about they're going to be here. Cool the trigger because they're they're fantastic. Thank you All right, Mark, so let's start diving in I Want to cover a little bit about what you guys are doing down in Florida Okay, and then we got to talk about Yuri the whole reason that

You even went to Ukraine was Yuri so I asked you to bring Yuri in, who is Ukrainian. And so we'll be hearing from him later on in the interview. But yeah, we'll start off with Hurricane Relief real quick and then move into what's been going on in the five trips that you've been to Ukraine and kind of what the morale is over there for the people of Ukraine. Right. Let's start with Florida.

Yeah, so the hurricane came and I actually, you know, I do all of kind of the forward field operation type stuff with Overwatch, right? We have a guy who does my partner Brad Brad he does a lot of the back end Side of the house stuff and then Yuri is kind of helping with a bunch of the logistical stuff and especially with Ukraine But with the teams and all that kind of stuff, you know, we call them task forces. That's kind of me who runs that who comes Schedules of where we're going and when and all that When hurricane season comes, I track all the hurricanes, you know, I track them from when they're tiny little baby windstorms

all the way up to when they actually hit and they're now the hurricane and we use some technology to do all that kind of stuff. So this hurricane's coming. Of course, we're kind of planning on Of course, we're kind of planning on going and making the difference that we can make. We kind of excel on the day zero to day four or five, kind of time frame, right, where we can get there and make the dynamic impact that's needed, you know, helping people that are really stuck before some of the authorities get there, some of the you know Fima and Red Cross and all that takes em a little while to get set up on that kind of level. I mean we end up doing search and rescue before the police and first responders do first and rescue. Like we're very fast on that. We have the level of guys that can do that. So Hurricane comes obviously obviously, it hits the Fort Myers area. And we had an

advanced team that was going down ahead of the team that I was with. They had the truck with all the gear, um, chainsaws, all the equipment, and they had, um, food and water that we were going to distribute. Hurricane happened. happened, how, how, why are you there? This hurricane, we were there the day after. You were there the day after. The day after, yeah. And that was the same with the Hurricane and Louisiana last year, you know, and because that's when we can make an impact

and that's when people really need that kind of help, you know, and I'm, I'm gonna say this, and I know it's gonna sound bad, and I'm not putting this type of work down because it needs to be done. The guys we take to something like a hurricane can do a lot more than clear trees off your front lawn. Do you get what I'm saying? So we go down to do the work that's not

clearing trees off someone's front lawn You know and so so we punched down we sent the team down ahead because we're in Chicago and it takes 18 20 hours to drive down there So these guys need to head down there then me and a few guys flew down and This was last week where we're very close to when the hurricane hit here, you know, as we're filming this. So this was a week ago, kind of the first weekend of the hurricane we'll see. When the hurricane hit, we flew down, met up with those guys, and we had a plan to go distribute the food and and our initial plan was we were gonna go to the east coast of Florida and follow the hurricane as it gained more speed and kind of power heading towards Georgia and South Carolina, that kind

of thing. That was kind of what we were thinking. But on the plane, I got a message or saw it. There was a message from the Recon Sniper Foundation that said there was a marine on deployment who's aunt was kind of missing. She was, they had contact with her, he had had contact with her 74 years old, she was in the Fort Myers area and hadn't heard from her in whatever it was, a day or something. And the last kind of columns they had was water was coming in our house. A lot of people coming in our house. A lot of people drown in their houses.

Yes, yeah, and I mean, you know, I'm sure you'll post some of the pictures. We have pictures of those water lines in houses. And you just, the devastation and the magnitude and the power of these storms, it's, you know, I sit there and I just say, like, can't get my head around the physics of of a storm like that and you know and how that affects our houses and our cars and and what it does and and so yeah She is water coming in her house. They don't know anything else. So You know, I'm on the plane. We're flying down and You know, I'm on the Wi-Fi and it's like okay, so I reply back. Hey, I'm going to Florida

Wasn't plan on going in that area but get me in contact with this guy and we'll sort the out, right? So the Recon Sniper Foundation does that. Now we're in like a three-way chat with, you know, with that Marine and he's giving me all the intel he has, name, address, all this kind of stuff, the situation and all this. So we land and I split our team, you know, our we were gonna meet and then all head out there together. I grabbed another guy, our comms guy and said we're gonna just go and take care of this and make sure this Marines act is okay and those those guys were gonna continue on and do the food drop and the water drop

and start working out that way. So we arrived, it was like 10, 30 or something and we drove all night to get from Atlanta, Georgia to Fort Myers. And after flying down, drove all night, the two of us, we got there, it was like seven o'clock in the morning, beautiful Florida morning, and it's like,

now we're in this ladies driveway. Kind of thing, right? It's like, all right, let's go knock on the door, and yeah, she was in there, you know, a ton of distress, she was really freaked out, obviously. House was underwater, right? I mean, it was just crazy. She had done the best she could,

trying to get her then up off the floor. Her generator was all jacked up, so she had no power. Everything was kind of going crazy. The water had receded a little bit, by the time we got there, and then we just kind of spent the day helping her, helping a bunch of people.

She lived on a canal, so you can imagine, right? Those kind of little canal areas in Florida, and she was showing us video and pictures, and she actually had, like imagine we're inside this room, or at home, you're inside your living room, she had waves crashing against the walls of our living room. Oh, man. You know, it's like, you can't get your head around that. Yeah. And, you know, 74 years old,

and so we just helped her and her kind of area. Then we start, guys are up in Jacksonville doing their thing. Everything's good to go. Very successful up there. And we saw obviously Fort Myers was just destiny. That was the epicenter. Much the same way that Laplace, Louisiana, was in Hurricane Ida last year. And so then it was just like, okay, we need to get these guys down here because this is where we're going to stay, obviously. So we kind of dealt with that all day, you know, and it was a bit of a mess trying to get the guys down. And that was our first trip. We just kind of did all that, but some of the scenes, you know,

and the difference between the hurricane and a small town of Laplace, Louisiana, and that being the epicenter to a place like Fort Myers, which is pretty big, pretty built up. And obviously, there's a lot more going on there with the bolts and bridges and all this kind of, you know, you're from that area, you know how it is. There's a lot more going on there that if a storm like that hits a place like that, it's causing all kinds of problems, even just trying to

move from one side of the town to the other with the rise and floodwaters and all that becomes a bit of a nightmare. Something that was going to take us an hour, ended up taking us six hours. Just because you have to navigate. And for us, it's learning who to talk to and who not to talk to. A lot of people just want to shut you down and like, nope, you can't go that way

or you can't do this or who the hell are you. And you just kind of have to learn to navigate around that stuff so that we can actually get stuff done. So that was the first trip. Then we went home and there's a reason we kind of went home and a reason we went back. We went back there this last weekend and helped out a bunch. We had a boat so we got out to San Abel. The bridge is all jack up there, but you could get on the islands by boat So we had a boat we did some of that we went to Fort Myers Beach again where everything was just decimated and did You know our wellness checks the the difference with going to the hurricane this late on like day 10 and 12

Is that there's a lot more bureaucracy there now there's all these contracts that are out that there's a lot more bureaucracy there now. There's all these contracts that are out. People are getting paid a lot of money to go and help now with different things. And just a lot of red tape, we ended up doing a lot of wellness checks. It was more like search and recovery. More search.

Is Overwatch getting paid? No, no, no, no, no, we're not getting paid. So you're saying there's just a bunch of non-profits and companies down there that are waiting on big money to come in? Right, and then they want to maybe keep people like us out, you know They're not there for the people though. They're for the money. Yeah, I mean, I and I'm not gonna speak for them You have to ask them if they're there for the money But I mean, you know, I got to the point where there was a red tape issue

We were talking to a bunch of first responders like where there was a red tape issue, we were talking to a bunch of first responders, like police and sheriff guys that were manning a checkpoint that was controlling traffic going over the bridge into Fort Myers Beach. And they were all four sending us over there, but they didn't want to get themselves in trouble. I'm trying not to get them in trouble now either. They ended up giving us enough hints that I picked up on that we were able to use the boat we had to get onto that island to help people. To help people. And, you know, we had to go through this mangrove swamp to get there and we had to kind of do a bunch of stuff. It was one hell of an insert just to get onto this freaking island. But we got there and we started working, you know what I mean?

And the alternative is you just say, okay, and you go trying to find something else to do and you're gonna end up just helping people pick up stuff off their lawn, you know? But that's not us. So it's like You know, I say this all the time like an obstacle is just an obstacle. An obstacle doesn't mean no An obstacle just means you have to figure out what do you have to do it? Do you have to climb over it climb under it? Smash through it like it's just an obstacle, you know, so you just figure out and we obviously have the guys to be able to do that and they'll do anything, right? And so we were able to go on there and do some recovery type search and recovery type

work and clear some houses and make sure of them was okay. And then, you know, we went to Sanibel twice. We were kind of working with the fire department there. Those guys are working so hard. They have a lot of help from people from all over the country and all over Florida. But there's a lot of miscommunication and disorganization and the guys that are working hard are, we could see they were, this was now day 10 12 very tired and it was actually

Yuri who basically helped these Firemen from probably hearting themselves on a 30 foot ladder. They didn't have the ladder set up correctly And they just were trying to get up on the roof and do something and that would probably gonna end in tears You know get up on the roof and do something and that would probably gonna end in tears, you know. So connecting with them, the fire chief, the police out there, we just saw on that second trip that people were very overworked, very tired, very just like, they would rather just tell you know, then have to think about at that point, they're just really gassed out, but they're working their tails off for the people of Florida, the guys that actually

are stepping up and getting stuff done. And you know, I learned a lot there this weekend, like the last, you know, this whole time since Hurricane came. Number one, I made a mistake was I had sent, we had sent a team and I went with the, with the advanced part A, it was kind of, we'll talk about it, but our fifth trip to Ukraine at the time during hurricane season. And it was a kind of star-studded group. Everybody really good on that group that it was like our eight team guys that went to Ukraine.

And then when the hurricane came, I needed those guys and didn't have them. So it kind of was a mess. They came on the second trip. A bunch of those guys came on the second trip. Like I said, they came straight from Ukraine to the to the hurricane. But you know, next year we can't have anything going on in Ukraine or anywhere else during a hurricane season. We need to make that the focus. It was the biggest thing that I learned. Because we could have had two teams and we could have had guys that were typically going to be our support guys.

They couldn't be support guys. I needed them out in the field doing stuff. And so we were stretched kind of thin and that was totally my fault. We could have done so much more if we would have had different guys there. So next year, learn that lesson for sure there. And that's something we never had. It's kind of cool when you look back at it that we had a team in Ukraine and a team at the hurricane at the same time, two different continents doing two different missions and really doing good work. I mean, that alone is amazing. I just, I want to reiterate to the audience, this, the Overwatch Foundation was an idea six months ago. Now you got a team in Ukraine and a team down in Florida.

Yeah, and I mean, it does, it is, I guess, impressive, right? I mean, we're doing good work. We made stuff happen, obviously, on both fronts, but it could have went a lot better in my mind, right? Like, and in actuality on the ground, it could have went a lot better. So those kind of things, and as we grow, and as we're expanding and all this kind of stuff, those are lessons I have to learn. You know? Yeah. The other thing was too, I was a little bit too, especially on, The other thing was, too, I was a little bit too, especially on... It goes into the fact that when it comes to a hurricane, we need to focus on day zero through day four or five.

Because there's too much red tape after that, people start getting involved, and you know... I tried to play by those rules. First of all, I didn't know those rules were going to be there when we got back down the second time because our experience the last two trips to hurricanes we did we didn't there was no rules, right? I mean it was yeah Wild West and we could just get involved in and help So I tried to play by those rules This last weekend and we ended up just Throwing the rule book out the window and doing it our way anyway and being creative and finding ways to get our work done.

And the lesson there was I should have just done that from the beginning. Yeah, we have the guys that can do that. We had the capability with the boat and some of the people we had down there with us. I should have just done that anyway, but I'm learning, you know? Yeah, you brought up when we spoke on the phone when you were down there. We brought up, I asked, you know, how, you brought up, when we spoke on the phone,

when you were down there, we brought up, I asked, you know, how's it going? I have family down there. Yeah. And it's weird because I feel like I have more knowledge, or I think that a lot of the people that are outside of that area have actually more knowledge on what's going on down there

because they don't have any cell phone service, they don't have any TV, they don't have, I mean, my family just got power yesterday and they're completely oblivious to what's going on around them other than the immediate area. And so when you were telling, when you told me, on top of that, one of the reasons I left Florida is hurricanes, because there goes, even if it doesn't hit, there goes damn near a month of your life, get two weeks preparation almost, you know, stores are empty, the looting that comes after the crime,

and then, you know, the actual disaster. But, and I'm used to seeing all the looting. So when you told me, I think you said zero to five days, all you saw was communities of people coming together, helping each other out. That was really refreshing. And then, I mean, I think a lot of guys that have been in the military and deployed to,

the various places that we've deployed to across the world, we see what desperation looks like. Nobody understands what desperation looks like if you haven't experienced it or seen people that are experiencing it. And when you said, I think with day six to 10, desperation started sitting and you started seeing people heading over to Santa Bel,

looting the island on boats, getting back on the boat, coming back, a lot of crime happened, a lot of desperation crimes happening at gas stations. Do you guys run into any of that? We did a lot last year in Louisiana. And it is, it's like society deteriorates really quickly when you have no food, no water, no power, you know, no gasoline.

And, you know, we're guys that are riding around with food, water, and gasoline. Yeah. So, we're very careful on where we go and how we go. We obviously can protect ourselves. We put ourselves in positions where, you know, that benefit us. But,

and when we went to this last hurricane, we didn't see too much of it actually happening. We saw stuff starting to break down a little bit to where people just, they're congregating where they shouldn't be congregating and all this. But at that time, we didn't have the capability to go out to the islands and do any of that. Pine Island, I think there was a lot of crime happening.

Santa Bell as well. It's just, it's very, it's very weird to see the arc of, hey, we're just so happy. People are here helping. We're so happy that we're alive and that we can kind of start getting through this. And then at some point for some reason it just tilts and people get desperate like you said and you know what somebody said

at said this line I don't remember who it was but it's like we're three meals away from kind of this dystopian crazy going off the rails kind of thing and it's true I've literally seen it I've seen it in two different locations, you know, same reason, the hurricane, but like it's real, you know, I've had enough. And I put a thing on Instagram about, you know, people say, well, why don't those people just prepare? Like, you know, hurricanes come and get food, get water. And I kind of thought that as well. I'm not a prepper by any means, like I'm not one of those people that, you know. Hold on. You're Overwatch Foundation is a disaster relief organization.

If you're not a prepper. No, I'm not a prepper at all, right? I mean, because of Overwatch, I probably have a couple of MREs here there. I'd have to dig through like a war box and find them or something, right? You know, but I'm not a prepper. And I don't knock anybody that is, it's just not me.

My basement is not full of food and water and marked this and cataloging that. It's just not what I do, right? But I saw people in Florida who were preppers and I saw cases of water with the tops blown off the water and the bottles full of sand. Oh man. And you know, food stores that had just been like, just basically blown up, right? And now that food grew and so it's like, and they had them in all the tubs with the airtight whatever, and you know, it's not like they're just stuff was sitting there. It was all packaged

and stored and prepped the way it should have been for something like this to make sure it doesn't go back. But, you know, these storms are incredible. And, you know, some of the pictures I've sent you some of this stuff, you're like, that was a house. Yeah. Or that was a steel warehouse. Or that was a boat. And you look at it and you're like, that was a house. Yeah. Or that was a steel warehouse. Or that was a bull. And you look at it and you're like, how did that bull, the water lines 500 meters that way? How is that bull, 500 meters this way behind the house?

Yeah. Think of what it takes to do something like that. You know, and then when I saw that, it's like, okay, so these are people that actually did prep. They had all this water and now they can't drink that water. Yeah. So, you know, it is important to kind of do some of that stuff and try and prepare yourself, but you can only do so much.

And then, you know, when that does happen to your stores, you can't even spend a couple of minutes thinking about it. It's over. Like, it happened. You need to still figure out how you're going to deal with this disaster. And the best way I see from everything I've seen is just, you need to leave, right? If you're in one of these areas that's going to get hit, just leave, because you don't know, sure, you could write it out.

Sure, you might have written out four or five or you may be doing this for 20 years, but that one could be the one, right, that ruins everything for you, you know? Yeah, you know, you brought up some other interesting points last night as well about body counts. You know, we talked about, a lot, I knew a lot of the people were drowning

in their house as a storm surge came. On top of that, a lot of people that decided, oh shit, this is a little worse than we thought and tried to evacuate it last minute, drown in their cars. And one thing that I found interesting that you had mentioned is that it seemed that the, I believe you said the county doesn't want those numbers. Yes, so we talked to a lot of locals down there and got a lot of information about that

that they don't believe what's being put out there as far as numbers of this that are the next thing, including body counts Last week they had closed up Fort Myers Beach because there were bodies rolling up on the beach And I know that because I talked to a fireman that was there collecting those bodies um And I think what they're worried about is And I think what they're worried about is,

for instance, if the county's taking care of that from a first responder level, that can kind of be, first of all, that's terrible, right? It's terrible. God forbid anything like that happens. They want to get that taken care of, but they want to get it taken care of with this least amount of publicity is possible for obvious reasons. I mean, it doesn't mean anyone did anything wrong. It doesn't mean there was poor preparation by local state or federal government or anything like that. It's just not a good thing to see bodies washing up on Fort Myers Beach, right? And so I understand they wanna get that taken care of

as quietly as possible and they may be thinking someone like me or another NGO or something, we'll just show up and take a bunch of pictures or live stream that on Instagram or whatever the deal is. And you know what, maybe there's nothing wrong with that. It's obviously someone's family member. It's all, obviously was a person, but it's a real life story. And it's something that, you know, I'm not saying I would take a picture of that and post

it or not. What I'm saying though is if someone does, that doesn't mean that someone's trying to smear a politician or anybody. It could just be, this is the level of devastation that happens here. And when this is coming to you, you need to realize that this could happen. This could happen. And this does happen. Not that it could happen.

It does happen. It could happen to you, but definitely happens. So there's kind of that there too, but the residents don't believe. I think when we, so I was just there on Saturday, we spoke to someone that said that the body count was somewhere around a hundred, and I could tell you, I was in neighborhoods that if those people would have stayed in those neighborhoods, there'd be a lot more than 100 dead just from that neighborhood. So to think in that entire area,

there's only been a hundred people. Now, maybe that's a hundred confirmed. I don't know how they're dicing this up. You know, we were in places where it was like, okay, we're gonna search for anything. It's gonna be hard to find something even if it's there. Yeah.

You know, you can't even go by the smell because everything's the whole place smells like, the whole place just to give you an idea. Smells like, you know, when you go on a port of John and Iraq in July, and it smelled that mixture of pee and poo smell. That's one of my favorite smells. That is the smell, coupled with salt water.

Oh man. And it's just, you can't get away from it, right? You can't get away from it. You're in your vehicle, you're out, you're a vehicle, you're trying to go to sleep, you go to this side of town, you go to that side. The whole place smells like that. So it's not like you're in a smell of body

when you go into a house. Yeah. Many of the houses had been searched by cadaver dogs. We could see that they were cleared with the markings with the canine and all that kind of stuff. So they are looking, um, but we found areas too where it's like you didn't look too hard because we can see footprints of where you someone was before us and you didn't search over here because there's no footprints, right? Um, so again, that could be, that could just be down to, hey, I popped my head in, okay, it's clear.

I don't know who's running these searches, I don't know who, I don't know to the depths that they're going, it's obviously nasty in there to be searching some of these places. You know, it's humans that have to do the searches, but it's just very weird on, there's probably more than 100 people when this is all said and done.

It's very sad, you know, it's very real. And we stood in neighborhoods, and I'm talking to some of our guys who are experienced operators and stuff. They're just standing there, like, never seen anything like this. Damn. It's unbelievable.

Well, if you listen to this on iTunes or Spotify or any of the other platforms on YouTube, we're putting a ton of feed, video that Mark and his team took of what the devastation looks like down there. So if you want to tune into YouTube, it's there. On that note, let's say a quick break. When we come back, it's all about Ukraine, perfect. PASSION

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We're diving into Ukraine now. You've been there, I think, six times. Five times total. Five times total. Okay, so four times since the last time you've been here. Yes. And we've kept in contact quite a bit since you've been here last and hearing the frustrations that you're going through and I just I really appreciate the honesty.

You know, you've made a huge impact over there. I want to talk about some of the frustrations that we talked about with the Ukrainian people. Some of the red tape you've had to go through, some of the current situations that are going on right now, especially the pipeline that was blown up from Russia to Germany, what their feelings are on that. And this nuclear weapons that increasingly seems to be becoming a more prominent threat as time goes on and As we discussed on the way here just last night they did they hit

they use 75 rockets and and all over you civilian locations and you're crying so Let's just start with the trip Yes, so we obviously came back here and sat with you and the response was incredible. So much so that we were able to quickly plan another trip to go back for our second trip. That trip happened in April, so we were here in March. That happened the end of April, like let's say the 20 something of April. We went and our focus then was on medical training, tactical training and medical training. I went with Tommy Santos,

who is our medical director at Overwatch. He did a bunch of stuff with seventh group and was a goat lab guy and all this and the army and just very high level medic. He's done a lot of courses since then as well to keep his skills sharp. It's not like we're living off his training from X amount of years ago. I mean Tommy's wired tight, right? He's relevant. Oh, he's, he's incredible. He's, I can't say enough good things about him. He's been on all of the rest of our Ukraine trips. He's been on our hurricane trips. He's our guy now medically at overwatch all of the

Sarks and and different you know 18 Delta guys that we are getting in our pipeline now to to be on our teams are being funneled through him Um, and he's coming up with all our curriculum and all this kind of stuff for the medical stuff. So We wanted some good gear to take as well. We were given a very large donation. At that time, we were not a 501C3. Now we are, but we were not. So it was very difficult for us to raise large amounts of money.

We were getting by off of just amazing people donating to us, you know five ten a hundred a thousand five thousand dollars at a time to help us kind of stay afloat but we got a large donation hundred thousand dollars from a charity that was a 501c3 and basically raises money for hospital non-profit type stuff It was a Ukrainian man with Ukrainian art where a man with Ukrainian heritage Hered about what we were doing at like a speech we were giving about What we were doing in Ukraine or what we did in Ukraine on the first trip

He gave us this money, but the condition was obviously it was to be used on medical supplies. Okay, no problem, right? So, what are we going to use? Because remember on the first trip, Zach and I were going through a neighboring country that we fly into, and we were just raiding pharmacies and grabbing all the gauze, everything that, you know, two Marines thought would be good to kind of fashion IFAX with, we were just grabbing it, right? So it wasn't the best of gear, regardless of how hard we tried. So we wanted some good gear, we connected with the guys at GBRS and Cole kind of let me know like, hey, we're working on some stuff, they were kind of

developing what they were going to do from a medical level at that time as far as like IFAQs and what they were going to put out in their training into their people. And they had the expedition trauma kits from Focus Research Group. And I can't say enough about focus, enough good things about Focus Research Group and their product and you know,'ll get into we use these now these are the effects we use and we've had incredible success with them in Ukraine in combat for the guys and so Cole was able to kind of hook us up with that and his team was fantastic of you know getting them to us and and just

taking care of all the logistical end for us to get those kits. So we bought $100,000 worth of those. And... How many kits is $100,000 by... Oh, I can't remember at that time what we got because we got different prices. Let's just say, I mean, it's hundreds. Oh, hundreds, right?

Like, 600 or something like that, right? And, you know, we could, I told you about this, like we could have cheaped out and just went and got any eye facts, these Ukrainians don't have much and they don't have the training. We could have just cheaped out and got all kinds of different eye facts from other companies or we could have got certain eye facts that have kind

of a bunch of stuff in there that you don't need, that you or I would probably just field stripped anyway and throw half the stuff away. The thing I like about these is that everything in there is like stuff you need and it's what you want. And it's easily accessible, it's organized really well as far as like you rip that thing open, everything's where it needs to be. like you rip that thing open, everything's where it needs to be. They're just absolutely incredible, a focused research group. And, and, you know, obviously, it was great. To me, it's like, hey, if, if there are these level of guys that are using this equipment, we want to use this level of equipment.

I'm not going to cheap out on it. We're trying to do our best in this country for these people. We're going to take the best gear. So we had that gear, we took it over and started. We actually raised a medical platoon. Tommy, we went there, the same group that we went to before. And they had been training. They had continued their training that we, that Zach and I had taught them.

And I got there and I said, told me wasn't there on the first trip I said, okay Let's get a look and see see how far they've fallen right like we haven't been here and what? Eight weeks or whatever it was like let's see how good they are and and you know We had them doing the squad rushes and all this kind of stuff before and and breaking contact and all this and and and Team rushes and all this is of stuff before and and breaking contact and all this and and and Team rushes and all this is a cool. Yeah, let's see some weapons handling and They really impressed me. It was clear that they had been trained and that the leadership had been making sure that they were training

And it was like all right, so let's do this Tommy raised a whole medical platoon and it started off by how many how many people Oh in the medical platoon I think it was 10 guys maybe 12 guys something like that and it was basically like The way you kind of do it in the military who's interested in medical shit The little hands start kind of kind of going up. You know, okay boom. Let's go and little hands start kind of kind of going up, you know, okay, boom, let's go. And because our thought process was we don't want to just pluck people, because you know what, it's like you get plucked to do something you don't want to do. And these guys are going to calm back. If you're one of those dudes that, you know, you cut your finger and you get queasy, you don't want that guy as the med.

It's the medit, right? So, he would take them and start training them and get them using the focus kits and teaching them all kinds of medical stuff and he was sticking the nasal pharyngeal up their nose and they were doing decompression stuff. I mean, you know, his extent and knowledge and what we pushed on those guys was really good and then I started working more advanced tactics with the guys. Ambush, counter-ambush type stuff and they were doing really well. I think I showed you some of those videos way back then too. You did. They really were, you know, it's like anything else and they begin in, they kind of struggle

with it and then it's my job to obviously funnel that train and end to see where they're slipping and plug those holes and Give them the path to to be successful with the stuff because they're gonna use it, right? And then we would incorporate the medics into the tactics and Again, that was a struggle, right? You see these guys who Know a they know b but they can't put A and B together, kind of thing. And so we worked through all that, and they got to the point where on that second trip, where they were fairly impressive, like they could run it up. And if anybody went down, they could handle it and get back to the mission, you know.

How many guys overall, including the medical team and Think about About 40 guys had they gone out and come back They had just been training. They had just been trained. They had been doing their security patrols and all that kind of stuff But they hadn't been to the front. Okay So we did that that trip there and So we did that trip there. And on that trip, we actually started working with some of the Ukrainian special operations guys. There were guys there from different intelligence units.

And there was a guy there. I remember we got there. We got there on that second trip and they had a bunch of people there I hadn't seen before and it was like oh, so these are the guys that have been helping them train a little bit with the tactics We had been using and it was kind of like a standoff right? It's like me Tommy Yuri and then there's like these guys Well, they held are these guys. Well one of the guys had 32 years experience in the Ukrainian Alphas, which is, you know, their version of special operations equivalent to seals and all green braids, this kind

of stuff. So, there's me standing there, right? And I'm like, all right, well, this dude, and you just take one look at this guy. His name's Andrew. You take one look at him. You're like, he's kind of the guy, right? And he's kind of looking at me. And it's like, all right, well, I'm not here for vacation.

Like I'm running this thing. I don't care who you are, like I'm running out. Or I'll just go home, right? If you don't need me to go home, I'm not getting paid to be here. But, right. So on that, that was my mentality, like in my head. And so then it's like, okay, I need to put out enough

to show that I can say that. So we get to work and we're talking and talking. It's like, we can't mess this up. Mine like we have to put this down. They had some other guys there, high level intelligence guys from Ukraine. And then they had one guy there who was like, some kind of competition champion shooter, Olympic

level kind of thing. So they wanted to show us what they had been doing, running them through their tactics, and they were very old Soviet level tactics. Like, guys running around and two men kind of like, like, bundles very tight, and so much so when they got behind cover and we're laying in the prone they did this weird thing they interlocked their legs or whatever and I mean I had never seen it like that before it's like okay I have a question how do you get up like me and you laying in the prone with our legs and her locked shooting it up at the ends of a piece of cover yeah stand up right

like how's that gonna happen or if I want to stand up and you don't, we're like, it's weird, right? We're playing scissors with each other. So we're like, okay, we're not doing this. Like this is not a thing. And this is kind of your problem. Yeah. You know, like we need to update this a little bit. This is not like 1978 where you're fighting somebody somewhere, like we're not doing this anymore. And so we showed them, we had them run us through a couple of courses of fire that they were doing, we saw it, and then we showed them, and right away you could see, especially the guy from Alpha was like, okay, yeah, this is good. The same way on the first trip, the Cardinal kind of saw what we were doing, the Army Cardinal saw what we were doing, was like, yeah, this is what I want same way on the first trip, the Cardinal kind of saw what we were doing, the Army Cardinal saw what we were doing, was like, yeah, this is what I want.

And the Cardinal even so much so, like, I think he went home and was watching movies and was like, hey, can you do tactics like this? Can you teach stuff like that? Like, they want updated stuff, but their leadership at a high level is very old. Neither comes from that old time or was taught by people from that old

time, and there's just been no change in tactics in my opinion, since way back when. Wow. And so then when it comes to like, what's up? So you, you in the Overwatch Foundation, there's essentially rewriting the special operations handbook for Ukraine when it comes to CQB tactics and yeah, I mean like I'm bush and CQB stuff. Yeah It's weird to say that right? It's weird to think so weird to do it and and that's and that wasn't the plan

I mean, of course we wanted to help those guys and we'll talk about a little bit as well because I have this weird feeling of And we'll talk about it a little bit as well because I have this weird feeling of Essentially what me and my organization is doing it sound really bad when I say it right because we're a nonprofit But like we're training a foreign army But in my opinion, it's not training a foreign army. It's helping those men. Mm-hmm like It sounds stupid On a on a humanitarian level because these men don't have training. It's not like when you do fed in a SEAL team or in a recon platoon and you go and you're

doing fed with a foreign army and you're just exchanging tactics. So you're like, how can we work together using our tactics and your tactics together and like, how can we do this? We'll show you a little bit. Like, they have no tactics. Yeah. These are the same guys that were, when Zach and I were there, that were the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker.

They haven't been trained. They haven't had a basic training. They haven't went to infantry school. Well, we are talking about everything from the baker, the butcher, the carpenter to the Alpha Guys. Yes. Okay. Yeah.

And, you know, and you can see the Alpha Guy Andrews like, yeah, this is good to go, this is what these guys need. And, but they need it too. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And so this leads us into where we go, you know, towards the more present past. We start training these guys, get them to this level during that trip. And Tommy was incredible, you know, the whole medical stuff we did then and implemented

that was good. I mean, Zach and I, we could patch you up, you know, like if you get shot, I can stuff goes until you, I can throw a turn into it on you. Um, you know, I can put a chest seal on you kind of thing. But when you have a guy at that level, you know, and you've seen some of these guys and your platoons, those medical guys are fantastic. They're just, they're wizards. And having him there to be able to implement his knowledge on those guys was kind of what helped elevate us to the next level with their military. And being able to, you know, run at that level with those guys and have them plug into us

because now it's not like we're the dudes that just show up. A lot of the guys, we know those guys now, because we were there on the first trip, and so they're on the edge of their seat wanting to put out and wanting to learn. And so we did that trip, was I think, dumb kind of spotting on the days that runs together, 16, 17 days, let's say. And then we came back and we had distributed many of the focus kits that we took.

We're also going to units that we support out at the front lines. Remember, we do have this organization in Ukraine now that is actually it's changed. It's now overwatch Ukraine. We have a branch like an affiliate. Yeah, at that time, it still was the original one that we worked with before. But what they were able to do for us were they were able to get that medical gear out to the front lines to the guys that were actually fighting in that moment. Like not the guys we were training, the guys that were actually out fighting. So we were able to get that equipment out to them and get them trained up. Just kind of be a via video and that kind of stuff made videos and sent it to them on how to use that the equipment. But that equipment as soon as it landed there and we got it

there was being put to use in the front lines. Well, kind of feedback are you getting from the front lines? As far as the focus gets. Yeah, so our guys are the news on them. After that first trip, or sorry, the second trip, this one where we took the focus kits, those guys did so well. They must have impressed somebody because they got sent to the front.

And I remember it wasn't long after we got home. And it was probably the influence of the military intelligence guys, the alpha guys that were there being like, hey, these guys can go, you know, and these were guys that this was now end of April, beginning of May, in February and January, they were regular civilians and they went to the front and we started getting text messages about You know the training in the gear saving life and limb for those guys on the front That's amazing and you know, I remember we got a text message about that like a guy we know and he had a text message about that, like a guy we know and he had you know he needed a tourniquet to basically survive and you know you got shot and you needed the

that's cellular life hack and the training saved that dude's life and I remember I was sitting there was a Monday morning I was sitting in my kitchen eating oatmeal and that text message comes in. And the first thing you think about it's like all right we have to we have to fucking get back over there we have to do this again I need another hundred thousand dollars I need to go on the phone to call I need to I need to get a team put together we need to go do this again right because without that you know those guys don't have anything they don't have i-facts they're out there they're running gone until whatever and you know that's a guy that probably would have been dead if it wasn't for what that what our team did. And it's just, I never expected that.

When we took Yuri back the first time, they kind of didn't expect that to happen a few months later, a couple of months later. And, you know, it's the same on that trip. We did some CQB stuff. And it was like, they wanted us to start doing CQB stuff in the beginning with them, like their leadership. And I was like, no, like you guys,

you're not ready for that, right? Like you need to learn how to patrol. Like the rear security guy needs to learn to look behind them. Like we're not doing CQB, right? We're not there yet, you know, slow down, grasshopper kind of thing. But then during that trip, we started doing just very basic stuff. Very basic and look, I'm no dev group CQB type guy.

I have a ton of experience with CQB obviously and in my job, did a lot of that kind of work, but I'm not at that level, right? But I can kick a can around a room when it comes to CQB. So, he's a very basic stuff. Weapons handling for CQB, room entry, you know, one, two, three, four man, really focused on that first and second man type stuff. Just kind of talk to them how to actually clear room. This kind of stuff, very basic level.

They had never done any of it. And some of the videos are actually very funny of us. Like, okay, let's go get into this room. And it's the same as, you know, you probably saw when you first started it, you're guys stopping in doorways and we were launching things at them. We're like pegging them with stuff to show you can't be standing in the doorway. Can't we put some of this up right now? Yeah, we can put it up.

You know, and CQB is so difficult. It's so nuanced, it's so dynamic. There's so much that goes along with it. It's like how do we get these fundamental principles across to them, instead of high level technical stuff when it comes to CQB, right? Because you can paralyze yourself thinking about how to clear a house. So we needed to avoid that.

And so, okay, we get them through this basic course that we threw together and the guys were really working hard to pick up some of that technique in those principles. And again, you get that text message. I think I sent it to you from a guy who said, hey, thank you very much for those glasses on CQB. It saved my life today. Damn.

You know, on a room entry, saved my life. And you're just like, this is ridiculous. You know what I mean? Like this is, this is ridiculous. And, and it makes me so happy. It makes me so emotional to be able to help somebody like that. It's not helping the Ukrainian army. It's helping that guy, that guy, right? Who volunteer, he's not a military guy. He volunteered to go fight because of what happened in his country. This is not us on a contract training the foreign group or even training whatever, a county SWAT team or anything for a ridiculously expensive contract.

That's not what we're doing. I'm over there. We don't get anything for that. It costs us money to go do that. And thank God we've had the people that have supported us to the level that they have, you know, so that we can go and do that because it's saving lives. And you know, one thing we did was one of the groups that we worked with you guys have seen some of the video before in the last episode they didn't have uniforms they didn't have any kind of ballistic plates they didn't have any gear we were able to actually go out and and buy

ballistic plates for them for that whole company and uniforms for that whole company, and uniforms, for that whole company. And we went there, and we handed those uniforms to them, and gave them those plates. And you know, we talked about that on the last show, just how important that was, and that's something that we told them we would do, and we made it happen for them. And that's cool. That's a cool thing, right? And it's practical. They're going to use that stuff. They're at war. They're And it's practical. They're gonna use that stuff. They're at war. They're gonna use uniforms. They're gonna use ballistic plates, obviously. But the training when someone comes back and it's like,

Hey, I saved my buddy's life because you showed me how I use a turn of cat. Or I saved, you know, we saved this guy's life because you handed us a focus kit and Paul me showed us how to use it in detail. And even like, you guys raised a medical pattern. We kind of just came in and told their colonel, the head guy of their whole unit, like, hey sir, we want to raise a medical pattern. He just kind of was like, all right,

you know, we trust us, obviously, after everything we've done. And here's Tommy, here's who he is. We're gonna have him, we're gonna create a medical for you guys, full of medics. And you know, he could have said no, I don't want that. But he trusts us, we did do that work. People support us enough to get the equipment

that it takes to make something like that happen and to get our butts back over there. And next thing you know, we're saving people's lives. Like, I don't care if we're helping them win the war. I care that we save those guys' lives when they have to go and do what they have to do. That's what the whole thing's about, right? And again, there are people and there have been people and it could be me that can charge a lot of money on a contract to do this. And probably, you know, live a nice life off of it.

And that's not what we're doing. It's not what I want to do, it's not what I need to do. You know, we obviously need donations to stay afloat. We're a 501c3, but it's not about that. And it's not about Ukraine and it's not about Ukraine. It's about those men. Yeah. How much combat are these guys seeing? I don't know exactly enough, right?

I mean, they're out on the front lines and that's kind of some of the problem too, is as we've been there longer and we're doing these trips and we're learning more about kind of how this whole war is going on is how the war is being fought I highly disagree with. What do you disagree with? Well it's very complex. Well let's backtrack.

We'll get into that kind of stuff. We'll get into opinions and media, what's real, what's not, and a little bit. Right now, let's keep on task with what you guys overwatch is doing. What I'm curious about also is, I mean, you've been training these, everybody from farmers to the alpha guys, you spent five different trips over there.

Have any of these guys that you trained cycled through the front line back to wherever you guys are training at and what kind of feedback are they bringing you in person? Yeah, so now, um, so on that, on that, that was the, the second trip, right? The third trip, Tommy and I ran over, and again, this will get back to the question. When we took the gear, it's very difficult to get gear in there, right? I mean, obviously, when it comes to ballistic plates,

you're dealing with different, I-tire type stuff and all this, it's just a nightmare, right? I never thought, Sean, it would be so difficult trying to frickin' help people in the world. It really, they make it so difficult trying to freaking help people in the world. They make it really difficult trying to help somebody. It's kind of like if you fell down and busted up your knee and you're asking me to help you up, I kind of have to say, well, do you have this form filled out kind of thing before I help you back up off the ground?

So we're trying to do all this. Well, we took a bunch of stuff and it got lost. Right. Of the $100,000 we took a bunch of stuff and it got lost. Like of the $100,000 we took over. World of the gear? Yeah, the gear, probably 80 grand worth of it got lost initially. Oh my God. So it was ridiculous. We got most of it back in the first couple of days, you know, and a lot of it is you just kind of have to,

I think what's going over there now going on with this, and I'm sure it happened back in Arday with the rack in Afghanistan too, was stuff goes missing. And if someone makes a big enough stink about it, the stuff mysteriously reappears. But if someone just kind of bends over and takes it, okay, well, that stuff stays missing.

You know? Yeah. which I is standard. If anyone's at home and is surprised by that, you shouldn't be. This is just kind of what happens, right? So we obviously start making enough stink. Stuff comes back. A couple things here are there missing, but okay, the majority of it's there. Well, one bag had about 20 grams worth of gear in it and it was messing. And we were working every day trying to find it, trying to locate it and all this kind of stuff. Turns out we just kind of thought, so now we're not going to see you're here from this this gear again. We got back from Ukraine on that second trip and mysteriously it popped up three and a half weeks later,

something like that almost a month later. And it was at that point, it's like, okay, do we allow them to ship it back to us? Do we have someone from Ukraine trying to deal with the borders and go down and get it? Do we let them try and send it to Ukraine? And the answer was, nope, let's get back on a plane, go get it. We went back that third time, and again, it was more just kind of medical stuff and making some contacts with people that led us into kind of the fourth and fifth trips.

So after that, we started working heavily with the special operations guys. Tommy and this other guy, another medic and 18 delta guy went over and this for the fourth trip and they started working with the special operations, guys they're called CORD, they're basically the, they're like a hostage rescue team, kind of like a HRT team, like for the FBI kind of thing. Now they're obviously doing military operations, but that's kind of what they do. They're a very kind of high speed unit that Ukraine has. Again, their tactics are very old, surprisingly old, and Tommy and Dio went over and gave them all kinds of medical training at that time.

Very heavily into, because these guys are a legit unit that is being sent, they're being tasked with all kinds of stuff. Look, what kind of being tasked with all kinds of stuff. Look, what kind of stuff are, what kind of stuff is a HRT team, a hostage-rashky team? Where are they being tasked with in this war? Because this conflict is, it's... So this is...

We're going to take your country. This is part of the problem is, you know, it's kind of like if you take a basketball team that's really good at basketball, and you're like, well, hey, we need you to go play volleyball. Yeah. Like just because you're good at basketball doesn't mean you're going to be good at volleyball, right? But they're a jet basketball team and they're very good.

So let's just plug them in over here, right? It's not like that. Things are very, very, you know, and say what you want. Like, look at our special operations community. If you take development group guys and you throw them into like a CQB type hostage dress, you think that's what they are. They're incredible. Can they do other stuff? Of course they can, right? That comes down to the levels of training that we have for groups like that within our military. But like, they're not the best at that stuff. They're the best at this. And if you need this done, you call those guys and you don't even think about calling

anybody else, right? They're just plugging them in. They're plugging these cord units into the war. So they're, take all their, whatever, hostage rescue experience and throw it out the window because that's not what they're doing. Yeah, I mean, I don't mind. I mean, it seems like, what are they doing though? Because it seems like everybody should be

in some type of a defensive role. Actually, it seems like it should be in some type of a defensive role. Actually, it seems like it should be going offensive at this point. Yeah, and that's, we'll talk about that. But the, yeah, they're doing a lot of stuff. Obviously, they're trying to get them involved in more urban areas. You know, right now in Ukraine, there's a lot of artillery going on. It's very old school, still old school, like we talked about before, where they're just happy to love artillery each other, it's very old school, still old school, like we talked about before, where they're just happy to law of artillery at each other, which is ridiculous.

So they're trying to put them in more urban areas, and it's not like, it's not like there's something going on, like we had in Fallujah, where it's like we need to clear this whole city, like, street to street, house to house, room to room, it's not like that, right? But they're kind of trying to put them in more urban areas because at least that's somewhat more familiar to what they do. And they're just out there. They've had some training like I mean, they've had their level of training and the expectation is well you guys Know what you're doing better than anyone else and we need you so Go do this over here. They're not tasking them with what they do.

Yeah, I understand. They're just trying to get them involved because they have training, they can shoot, move, communicate a little bit, and they need bodies. Are any of the Ukrainian forces advancing? It's okay. The word advancing is an interesting word, right? And I've argued with many people over this, many Ukrainians over this. In my opinion, if you're sitting in that chair and you get up

and you leave and you go downstairs and then I go sit in your chair, I didn't really advance. I didn't really liberate that chair. I didn't take that chair over. You just left and I just sat in the chair. To me, advancing, liberating, taking something over is you're in the chair and I kick your ass out of the chair and I throw you down those stairs and now it's my chair.

Right, do you agree? I'd 100% agree. That's not what's happening in Ukraine right now. Well, I'm glad you brought that up. I wanted to wait, but we're in it. So we'll talk about it right now. I remember very distinctly during that conversation, you were extremely frustrated with what was going on.

And because I had called about, this was when the villages were popping up in the media. And you saw these mass grave sites that the Russians basically look like a massacre. Right. And the media was portraying that the Ukrainians are advancing, basically making it seem like there was a skirmish or a fight to regain that ground.

Then when I talked to you, that wasn't the case at all. The Russians had basically invaded, killed a lot of people, and then just left. And then the Ukrainians just walked back in there. Yeah, and it's after it had already been abandoned. Basically, there was no danger. Right, right. And look, I guarantee you someone can send me a message or talk to me about their cousin's brother's goldfish

was in Ukraine and he was in a town where there was fighting and they fought for that town. Yeah, okay, sure, of course, I hope so. Yeah. Like I hope so, right? But that's not happening on any kind of large scale. That's not the convention. That's not what's going on. That's the exception.

Yes, and what's happening is Russia's obviously very bad at this. All the stuff that we've been brought up to learn about Russia and they're fearsome military and they're advanced to whatever, it kind of has all been smoking mirrors for the last 50, 60 years it seems because they're pretty terrible at war fighting. Ukraine has a huge example of this. They get they push these units up, these units get to the point to where they start to struggle logistically. Food, water, you know, bullets, band-aids, communication, like even where to go next. Like you just kind of left us here, we're here in this town, we've massacred it, we've done whatever we've done here. Now what kind of thing? And what they're doing is is accordion style thing of

pushing guys out to do whatever. And then when the logistical side of that gets too taxing, they pull them back in towards that eastern line that Russia's been well established on since 2014. And so this big offensive that was in the media, this Ukrainian offensive, you know, again, if you want to compare it to Fallujah, Fallujah was, you took freaking battalions of Marines, you put them online, you know, and our special operations community is what, and you just cleared that city from top to bottom left to right.

That's a thing, right? Them leaving, Russians leaving an area, a town, and a Ukrainian unit moving into that town and waving their flag and everyone cheering and all this, that's not liberating that town in my opinion. Yeah. Right? Everybody's already dead. It's great that they're there.

It's great that they went there for sure. And now maybe they can give some assistance to what's going on in that town to their own people, you know, whether it's medical, humanitarian, whatever, right? And hopefully they can defend that town if anything ever happens again. But in my opinion, that's not liberating that town and that's not winning a war. Why do you think the Russians left

gain ground? I think it's they're so bad at reinforcing their lines and you know whether it's that bullets, band-aids, food, water. Do you think it's a total logistical nightmare? And that's the only reason they left? Yeah. Or that group's needed somewhere else, kind of thing, right? Because what they're doing right now, if you look at how Russia's fighting this war, is it's an indirect fire war. It's very old school.

It's we have these indirect fire positions, anything, from mortars, obviously, all the way up to all kinds of heavy artillery. And the Russian lines are built to just defend these indirect fire lines, right? And when they push out from there, if something happens and maybe there's a Ukrainian unit getting too close, they're pulling these lines back but it seems to be more Just the logistical nightmare because my thing is this And this leads into kind of stuff going further down the line to is Ukraine can't have it both ways You can't say you can't be posting all this propaganda about these Russians being drunk criminals and and they're stealing microwaves and washing machines and they're you know they're terrible at war fighting and

all this kind of stuff they're blowing up their own whatever and they're just really bad at this. Then at the same time then why are they still in your country? You know like if if that level of Russian that Ukraine is saying is the people that they're fighting against, they don't really want to be here. They're not really war fighters. These guys want to leave in all this. If they were in our country, I mean, we wouldn't probably even need to call up the National Guard to get rid of them. You could get civilians to get rid of them, right?

And there'd be enough civilians lining up with all their gear that still has the tags on it from Black Hawk Tactical to go take care of these Russian invaders Right because you don't need anything more than that So if these guys are so bad my question to Ukraine is then why are they still in your country? Why can't you get rid of them? Well, that's a damn good question right and that's part of my frustration with this whole thing. And, you know, we've had incredible success training these people. And we built on it each time, you know,

the fifth trip there, we did a massive trip there where we were actually training, you know, those special operations units, the tactics and the medical, like the same thing. It's like, okay, so you can do that there. Can you do it here? Can you build up that here? Can we add this to the training? Can we, we're building on this,

we're really creating guys that can actually go out and war fight, right? Guys that can actually go out and run operations and that can take it to the enemy and can make a difference in their country. And it's building on that. You know, we sent another recon guy over with the last group.

The last trip was kind of interesting because we got another fantastic donation. We were trying to raise $50,000 for that trip and For the fifth trip and I called the same gentleman who helped us the first time And I said hey, here's what we're trying to do were You know here's our plan and and I told them about the training and some of the stuff we were looking to do and He said okay. Well, how much are you trying to erase? I said, we're trying to erase 50 grand, and we were gonna try and like, crowdsource it.

And he goes, okay, I'll give you a hundred. Yeah. And it was like, okay, same thing again, on the phone to call. He's hooking, he's like, all right, well, I can get you more than last time, but it's gonna take me a second, because we're putting in huge orders for these things, right?

And his team helped out again, it was fantastic. And now, though, we had that same problem, well, how do we get the stuff there? On a financial level, for sure, but on a logistical level, too, because I don't want that nightmare from before, where we're losing this stuff And we have to go find it and and and possibly might lose it forever kind of stuff

And I don't want people it really bothered me that people took some of our stuff They didn't take a lot, but like people are taking some of our stuff So what we did was we took guys that would go just for the insert just to Basically as pack meals. Okay. Right, and we were going to carry all this stuff on from Chicago to where we go to get into Ukraine. And then our Ukrainian connection and our team there would come down, pick everybody up, and pick up the gear. They would push on into Ukraine,

and the rest of the guys would just go home. So we were taking guys just to be mules. See, a courier. Just to get the gear in without any hassle. Yeah. You know, and I mean, it was, It'd go a lot smoother. It always fantastic.

It was perfect, you know. But it was more expensive. Yeah. A lot more expensive. So, but in my opinion, you know, it was a good use of that extra money that needed to be spent because it was more like it was insurance. Mm-hmm.

You know, and, and I, could, because right now it's very difficult. This whole, what we're doing, how much is grown. And it's like difficult this whole what we're doing how much is grown and it's like the mission has grown Substantially the mission has grown but the bank account hasn't yeah Right In the beginning there was no bank account. There was no mission now. We have a very Blown up mission like it's very expansive and it's growing all the time But the bank account hasn't grown to match it.

Maybe you can start to get some deals from the people that you're buying these kits from and they can give you a discount. That might help. Yeah, and again, it's like we have to learn all of that. Yeah. You know, we have to learn all of that and I could probably go out and find a company that just wants their name out there that has an inferior product. But again, this is real now. These kids are going to Ukraine. They're going on these guys gear and they have to bust them out and they have to pull that rip tab open and they have to use it. And I don't want that text message or that phone call or that high level officer being told, yeah, the gear was just garbage, right? The gear that yeah, the gear was just garbage.

Right, the gear that those guys gave us was just garbage. I won't do it. You know, I'm not gonna do it. And it's not gonna do with my name or my reputation or my organization. It's those guys. It's literally those guys. Like, why would I, I know what that guy's about to go do

because his buddy, it happened to him. So why would I hand him something? I wouldn't use myself. Yeah. Well, let's move back into, we've covered the nonprofit and the donations and everything. Let's move back into, if you had any guy's cycle from the front line back in,

and what do they need? Yeah. So they're coming back and when they come back, they're plugging right back into the training. And they're not bringing them all back at once. I don't really understand the rotation. It doesn't really matter, but they're not bringing everyone back at once and sending a new group out. They're leaving some of those guys there

and rotating guys back, which is great for training because you know, all those guys have some experience and they go into the training and they are start working. And the problem is they're not doing that offensive type war fighting that they should be. I mean, in my opinion, from a 10,000 foot level, there's invaders in that country. I'll say there's invaders in our country.

It's our responsibility to push them out. They came here. We need to get them out of here. And that's really not what's going on. And this all started coming out to me from guys who had seen your show and they are working with the foreign legion. Former Marines, former army guys that are over there fighting for the foreign legion and they're getting paid and they're, you know,

whatever they're being, and they were being used in the beginning and the way they mainly were being used, guys who have experienced Brits, Canadians Canadians, Americans that have GWA experience, they were using them in forward OPs, like observation post type positions, because if they started taking in direct fire, they knew how to get off the X and break contact, right?

They were skilled enough to do that. And they also were using them heavily to go where Russian armor was prevalent and plant mines on roadways and pathways that armor was moving through. Okay. So there were send-in these guys out, and I know this because I've talked to a bunch of guys,

you know, via text on phone and I've, you know, I have all the pictures and all this kind of stuff, I know this to be fact. This is what these guys were being tasked with. They weren't sending them out to go and, you know, hit Russian positions. Why? Why? Sean, this is the question I'm saying, and this is a question they're saying. Imagine an outlook. Is this from like top like Zelensky down? It's from

it's from the Ukrainian. So the way the foreign Legion works is they have their kind of internal command and that answers to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense. So whoever in their military lines, there'll probably be some kernel or general that is working that chain, right? But they are being told not to do that. I'm not someone that would go sign up to fight someone else's war. There's all kinds of opinions about that. It's not something I would do, I don't think, right? But these guys have.

They've literally put their life on the line, And a bunch of them have experience, obviously, in Iraq and Afghanistan. A bunch of them have experience doing this kind of thing in Syria, right, with YGP and all those kind of groups when all that was going on. And now they're doing it in Ukraine. And you could say they're mercenaries, whatever. I don't want to hear it.

They're putting their lives on the line, whatever. Whether they're in pain or not, right? They're still there. They're still trying to do the job and they're trying to help and they have a ton of experience and they're being told sit there and do nothing right and they're asking they're the same thing that you said same thing I said why why if you're Ukraine and you have Russians in your country I still can't get my head around that. These people are in your country and they're doing these things to your people, right?

And now you have even foreign fighters with a ton of experience. We're not even going to talk about your army and the lack of training and the lack of money and, you know, even though Russia has been fighting against your country since 2014, you haven't invested in your own military and all this. We're not talking about any of that yet. We're saying there are large amounts of proven warfighters with a ton of experience that can make a difference. Why won't you use them? Do you know why?

I don't know why. My opinion is they don't know how. Do you think that's what it is? I think it's the money trains going to stop if they become too effective. That obviously is a very strong possibility because you know the line now is it's like look what happened to one of our towns look what happened to our civilians we need more help. It's a victimized. Help yourself. Healthality. Yeah help yourself. My opinion if I was the president of our country, if I was Congress, I'd pull the plug on money to Ukraine. And I'm the Ukraine guy. I love these people.

My organization has been there five times. I'm heavily invested in these people. But I think we should be done. I don't want any of my money, any of your money or any of our children's money going to Ukraine. Well, you know, that's another thing. Another, this was actually the same phone call I believe. I don't talk to them. I still remember because I was in a hardware store when I was talking to funny. But, I remember that phone call here. You were mentioned to me that, to your knowledge, none of the, all the money that has been spent on the Ukraine war from Ukraine is either US dollars of foreign aid.

Yes. And none of the money has come from Ukraine itself. Yeah, I think I saw something... Why are they not investing in themselves? So this goes back, like, since the war started in 2014, when that kind of cleared up, when it calmed down, right? And wasn't so prevalent. If I was Ukraine then, and Russia just came in

and took like, you know, did what they did in Donbass and was doing what they were doing in Crimea, and you're able to quell that a little bit through international pressure and all this kind of stuff. When I come home and I take my boots off, the first thing I'd be thinking is, okay, we need to put money into our military. We need to defend the eastern part of our country and build up defenses there.

In case Russia comes in and does this again. So we need to kind of get into defense spending now. Obviously, I mean, you should have been you could argue you should have been doing that anyway because Russia lives to your east. Right. I mean, so what they yeah, but they haven't done anything. Yeah, but they're there. It's a threat. We should be putting some money towards building a fence or something, right? We should be doing something. And it never happened.

A lot of it has to do with the previous president was very hit a lot of business in Russia, big business, and was very sympathetic to Russia. much of the Eastern part of Ukraine is very sympathetic to Russia They speak Russian is it worth defending? honestly Yes, so that's a question for a Ukrainian in my opinion It's like it's not the same and in please don't hate me people from Texas. But it's like saying, well, it's Texas worth defending, right?

Because Texas kind of thinks they should be their own thing. It's like a joke, right? Well, I mean, I think a way, a very relevant way to have this conversation is how much China is investing in U.S. real estate and farmland. You know, eventually the influence from all of that and from all of those investments, it's going to be all Chinese influence in particular parts, very particular parts of the US. And that's what's happening in Ukraine. It's not the Russian government, it's Russian influence.

Everybody has an alliance to Russia because they are Russian. And that's how that influence happens. There's people in Eastern Ukraine who consider themselves more Russian than Ukrainian. And that's a problem because then these people get into the local and kind of state government over there. They get into the police departments. They get into all this kind of stuff. They get into business and obviously then that influence spreads, right? I mean, if you think you're something, you're gonna align with those things and that has happened

I mean so much so that they speak Russian. They don't speak Ukrainian. And I don't even speak the language and that's a big key to me, right? I mean, I'm a big history buff buff much of history has been determined by language it's very it's very interesting very nuanced but if you look into who took over this and why and all this much of it has to do with language and so that's kind of a fundamental thing that always sticks out to me is okay you have this issue with Russia yet most of your eastern part of your country speaks Russian.

That's, I have questions, you know what I mean? Like at least I have a couple of questions about that. And so this is what was going on since 2014. You have these high level politicians in Ukraine that are very sympathetic to Russia, business, all this kind of stuff. They didn't put that money in their defense spending for obvious reasons. You know, they're in bed with them. Well then something like this pops off and it's very easy for them to have a massive

foothold for the Russians to have a massive foothold in the east. Many of the Eastern Ukrainians and you know many of my Ukrainian people will kind of not be happy that I'm saying this now. They would move to the west of Ukraine. Obviously, war in very war torn areas, destroyed areas. They would move there and they have a very negative thought about people from western Ukraine. Oh these people are this, they're that. They almost hate them. And they would go into the houses, like people from Western Ukraine would open their houses

to people from the east, and they would trash their houses. And just, there's a very weird cultural thing between Western Ukraine and Eastern Ukraine. And it's affecting the war. You know what? It's society affecting politics and all of that affecting war. So was Ukraine up very divided country before this all happened? Um, divided how? Like, many.

Well, you're talking about East and West. Yeah, I don't think it was very like, um, it wasn't to the point where it was like the East wanted to be part of Russia. It wasn't really that. Because those people, even though they were heavily Russian, influenced had a better life as Ukrainians, as they would if they were Russian.

They kind of wanted their cake and eat it too, if you know what I mean. Yeah. But there was a big divide. Like if someone from the East went to the West, they're kind of like, oh look, there's someone from that place kind of thing. And it's very kind of segregated that way with very negative connotations towards people

from this part of the country or that part of the country. And obviously, as we're there more and we're meeting more people you're learning this about their culture, we don't have that here. And people who want to cry, racism or whatever here, like we don't have that level of divide in this country. We have an artificial level of divide in this country, but that's real, right?

We don't have that here. People from New York don't hate people from California. It's not a thing. You know, you even make jokes about them or whatever, but like you don't have this fundamental like, I don't think we're the same thing. I don't know, Mark, it's looking pretty divided. Well, yeah, we might be headed that we might be headed in that direction, right? This could be a lesson we could learn. I don't think it's geography. I think it's yeah, we're there. It's more geography because rushes on that eastern part of the country, right?

So geography connects it more so like politically probably is where the divide starts in our country, you know. So that starts factoring in as well. And you know, my whole thing is, if you come to me, if you told me, hey, Mark, I need you to come down to Tennessee, there's people on my, on my property, right? And I need help getting rid of them. And I say, look, I can't come down, right? The US is saying we can't send dudes over there. We're not sending our guys over there to fight this for you. And then you say, Mark, okay, can you send me money to help them? Because I need to do some stuff. I need to fund this, getting rid of these guys off my land.

Okay, I'll fund you. Now I fund you to the tune of $60 billion. Mm-hmm. And you're still standing there with your hand out. Give me more money. I'm probably gonna want to peek in and say, what did you do with the $60 billion? That you can't, like, you want more?

And if I give you more what are you going to do with that? Yeah. Because you can't be telling us or we can't be seeing that these Russians are so terrible yet you can't push the... I just can't get over that. You can't push them out your country. And why aren't you even taking it to them? How offensive would we be if something like this happened in our country? I would hope extremely offensive. I have no doubts. I don't care who the president is. I don't care what politics are. I have no doubt we would be

ferociously offensive if something like this happened, you know, and they're just not and I get it you may not want If you're Ukraine and you know yourself that you haven't you don't have a well-trained army Which you don't you may not want high numbers of casualties coming out But you have form fighters that you're not even taken there leash off and the other thing in this bothers me We went to that country at the end of February and we will take the guys that we took that were brand new, they enlisted the weekend before we got there, right? And they were the butcher baker, Candlestick maker, and we were essentially their basic training, let's say.

They don't have basic training. They were being, these guys that are being either drafted or are volunteering, are basically being told, here's kind of a uniform, here's maybe a rifle, here with this unit over in this town, and you're just gonna basically be gate guard in this town that is okay. That's them joining the army. Now, my, let's take my route, Now, my, let's take my route, okay? You sign up to go to the Marine Corps. It's three months of basic training, right? You go to Paris Island, you go MCRD, San Diego, three months of basic training.

At the end of that, you're in shape. You're in much better shape than when you stood on the yellow footprints when you first got there. You're in shape. You're basically much better shape than when you stood on the yellow footprints when you first got there. You're in shape, you're basically trained marine, and you're ready to move on. Right? So then let's take in the case of what Ukraine needs infantry. Okay? So that's three months.

So if you took it from what we were saying, that's March, April, May. Okay? To have a basically trained guy. School of infantry is two months long. You go there, you learn everything, you learn basics of shoot, move and communicate, you learn ambush tactics, you learn weapons, heavy weapons, tactics, right? 50 cows, mark 19s, all this kind of good stuff. 24 is all this, you know, whatever, right? If you're gonna be a mortar man in the Marine Corps infantry, you learn 60 and 81 millimeter mortars and boom.

At the end of School of Infantry, you've had five months of training, and you can literally check into a Marine Rifle Battalion and do a workup to go on a deployment. In the case of the G-Watt, you could go to Iraq and Afghanistan. You're ready to start doing your job. You're still the bottom man, you don't have any experience, but you're basically trained

as a Marine and as an infantry Marine to go and do that job, to go fight. So again, we said March, April, May, June, July. So if they would have, when they had 200th, and when I say they, I mean, Ukraine, Ukraine proper, they had 200,000 people in list that weekend before Zach and I got there. It's incredible. Wow. It's incredible. We talked about that. Imagine if 200,000. 200,000 civilians signed up because Russia invaded their country. That's incredible. It's so heroic. It's so, I mean, it brings tears to your eyes

to think that men just stood up and we're like, we're gonna go do something about this. Don't know what we're gonna do, but we're gonna go do something about this. 200 men you had since the end of February, by July, those 200 men could have been basically trained war fighters and they didn't train them.

I was the idiot that trained them. And not them. I didn't train 200,000 people. I trained like a company's worth of them, right? By July, you could have had basically, we're not talking about guys going at buds or BRC or you know Tartar are very basic we're talking infantry to me a basically trained infantry guy and I'll tell you what right now It can be done in nine weeks

The army does it in eight weeks right basic training and all this kind of stuff and it's like now This will piss people off too. These guys have been, some of those guys have been in the army since February. You see pictures of them now, they're fat still, they're not in shape, they couldn't run from me to you, right? They're requests that send cookies, we need food. They're out, they're out not at the front lines,

but they're in like a forward position where like, you know, they're just kind of holding down a town. They're not in any combat. They're not taking in direct fire. They're just kind of there. The unit that was there moved to the front and they moved in behind them, just to kind of, you know, they have checkpoints.

They're running checkpoints every day, gate guard of their little compound and everything, but they're not actively war fighting. They're serving their country. I'm not putting them down. But what I'm saying is, they're fat, they're outshaping their request and cookies from home. That's not a warfire. There's Russians in their country. And you could say, well, it's up to the individual man.

And that's somewhat true, right? I mean, we both had that responsibility. It's like, I need to do this so I can stay on this team. I need to do this so that I can be there for the guys. But remember they don't have that mentality. Many of them were civilians. Nobody trained them. They joined up to do what they needed to do and in my opinion their country let them down. I was trained. You were trained. I mean, did you ever feel in your career that you didn't have the training you needed to do your job? No.

Never. Never, never, never. They got no training. The ones that we stumbled upon, they got training as the best we could, and those ones got sent to the front. Why? Because they had training. So then why don't you train everybody? What are the local Eucarnians think of all this? I don't think they understand how it works. They know. And I've had conversations with Yuri about this too and he obviously

doesn't understand how it works. We've all had conversations with different Ukrainians about it and you know like okay let's start here. If a guy in lists, or you draft a guy, send them to six weeks basic training, create a basic training school course for these guys. Have a little bit of drill to teach them some discipline, right? Have them freaking march to go get food every day or whatever. Whatever you want to do, get them in shape.

These guys now, I can show you show you I mean I've showed you pictures these guys are when did he enlist and the February why is he look like that right now damn how is it possible how is it possible oh but in the beginning we just had to get the guys in and it was a scramble I get it if 200,000 people joined the US Army the US Navy the US Marine Corps Air Force, over a weekend, it would put a strain on the system. It would, right? You know, you create recruiters out there, like, I wish that would happen, right?

Especially right now. Especially right now, yeah. But it would put a strain on the system, but you know what, you have a problem. Like, that's just an obstacle for you. Like we mentioned in the beginning, the problem is there's Russians in your country. Fagure that problem out.

Yeah. Right? That's a blessing. 200,000 people sign up. There weren't there yesterday. Wanting to go take care of this problem for you to figure that out. I mean, I don't care, Sean.

It sounds like a complete disaster when it comes to management. You're talking about, you have very capable men from foreign countries, US, Canada, Brits, working for the Legion, who could probably put a major dent in what's happening, but they are improperly utilized. And you have 200,000 Eukaryneans who are standing up who want to take their country back. You can't necessarily blame them because they've never been in more. They don't know what it's like. They don't know what to expect. But you have a country that is completely blown off the asset of 200,000 people. And so, how the fuck do you even fix this?

I mean, I don't know. If I could, I would set up a basic training curriculum. I would work with whatever drill instructors They see if you ask a Ukrainian and you talk to your Ukrainian you say look This is what needs to be done when I do it comes in you get 20 guys and it's time to like like a meps type thing Right they come in the enlist or they get whatever you give them their medical checks now. It's time to send them somewhere You send them to basic training they go there for X amount of weeks. They learn what to do. Give them Give them another month. Let's say it doesn't have to be like the Marine Corps. Where it's three months basic training two months school and infantry

Give them six weeks. Give them another month of kind of more infantry type tactic stuff and Then you put them in a unit, right? I get it, maybe there's not enough time for them. I do any kind of work up or anything like that. Okay, but you put them in a unit now, and at least they know what they're doing and they're in shape. I'd have no problem.

Like that would not be difficult to set up for them. I'd have no problem doing it for them, showing them how it's done. When you talk to a Ukrainian about that and you map that out, they're like, yeah, but that's just not what we do. We've never done it that way. And it's not going to, you know, the commanders are old and that that's just not the way we have done it. Okay, listen, man. Okay, then do it that way then. Do it your old way. Damn. You know, like that should not be your response. And every Ukrainian I've talked to, including the ones I love, that's their response.

That's just not how we do things here. Okay, well, you might end up not having a country. You know, and to be honest, at that point, remember, I'm the love you crane guy. At that point, you don't deserve to have your country, right? I mean, if we can't defend our country and we can't keep our country going, we don't deserve to have it. Like if you're not gonna change this now

when there's people standing on your soil, raping your women, totally decimate in villages, women and children, blowing up like actively target and you mentioned it today at the beginning, you know, 75 rockets, actively target in civilian places in your cities and towns. And you're just going to say, yeah, but if that's what we need to do to affect this happening, that's just not how we do things here. Then how do you deserve to have your country? And the problem is it's not the people.

The people generally are idiots. We know this. People generally are sheep. It just is Fact of society if that's what you've always known that's what you know But when you're these high-level commanders, you're these politicians you're you know like I talked to a to someone the other day and it's like yeah But the way we have to for something like that to happen like if we were gonna institute this new way of how the military does stuff, that has to get done in parliament through law and some of these parties, and you're like, all right, I'm done with this conversation. You're saying the obstacle to actually doing something about this is that the parliament doesn't normally do it this way? Okay, then we have nothing more to talk about, you know? And

it sounds like I'm talking about both sides of my face. I don't care about Ukraine. I thought you're not talking about both sides of your face. We've dressed this at the beginning, and that's what I love about what you're doing, is you're helping people, you're not getting involved in that. Yeah, I don't care about Ukraine. And I know you could take that clip, and could twist it and you could say, oh, don't

give that organization your money. He says you're helping Ukraine. And he also said, I don't care about Ukraine. I don't. I'll say it three more times. I don't care about Ukraine. I care about those people, right? Because they're the ones that are going to suffer.

All the politicians at the end of the day, if Russia takes over this much land or that much land, those politicians are going to make deals at the end of the day and they're going to be well taken care of. Right? We know that. That's how that stuff works. The people, the yearnings that live in Ukraine are not. Right? They're the ones that are going to suffer and the reason they're going to suffer is because they're trying to trust their government in their country. You know, I don't think government should have a big role in people's life, but it should defend people. It should defend the people. And kind of that's it, right? I mean, I don't have a tank. I don't have an F-35. If you have one government, can you help me with it if it ever comes to

that? Like, that's all the government should really do. And I feel their government's letting them down. And they're so patriotic about their country, which is a relatively new country, right? And their history that they just are okay with it. And it really frustrates me because, you know, sending them money isn't the answer. Giving them more money isn't the I wasn't the answer to begin with, you know. What is the answer? I think it's in the terms of first of all the answer is finding out what the hell they really want. What do you want to do? Do you want these Russians out here country? Do you want to make a deal with them over a certain land? Do you just want money so you can wash it and do whatever you want with it? Like, what do you really want? If the answer is,

no, we want to win this war, we want to kick Russia out and we want to make sure this never happens again to our country or our people. Okay, then your answer is you need training. You need you need to build an army that is formidable organized modern and Can actually do something about this because lobbying artillery at each other. I Don't want to say that's not war, but you can't really get anything done. Yeah. And the other thing that's happening, Ukraine is not attacking Russia in Russia either. And that's a whole, I get it. You're like, yeah, but Mark, that can't be a thing.

Well, it says who it can't be a thing, right? I understand why they're probably not doing it. Part of the deal is, look, we'll give you money. I'm great Britain, I'm Germany, I'm the USA, I'll give you money, but don't be love and artillery in to Russia, don't be firing any missiles at Moscow or this or even border towns, like don't do that. Keep it in your country, we'll fund you,

but don't be firing, definitely don't be firing anything that we give you in to Russia, but my thought is at this point, why the hell not? Does it appear that the money is being disseminated all 60 billion that we've sent? Is it being just, are you seeing it change the battle space at all? You sat there last night at dinner and Yuri said,

what, hey, we just made that deal for the boots, right? We tried to raise $60,000 to buy X amount of thousands of pairs of boots because winter's coming and those guys don't have boots. So we sent $60 billion to you, Karen. I don't even have a pocket. Can't even put boots on a guy's feet. I'm the one that's taking

eye facts there. These guys get these eye facts. They're blown away. They can't believe they have a piece of gear like that. You know, we're the ones and the viewers for the show are the ones, Sean, I had guys send to me their personal plate carriers. Yeah. Don't worry. I'll get another one. I'll send you this one. I was thinking about getting a new one anyway Those are what the guys are wearing in Ukraine. The eight there was an ATF unit in Texas I told you they changed all of their tactical gear from one color to another and they sent us all their old Mac pouches and camo back holders and chest rigs and admin pouches and all kinds of stuff, right?

That's what these guys have. You say, I wouldn't have to ask for that stuff or I wouldn't be so excited about receiving something like that if $60 billion was buying it for them. You know, and I get it, Javilan missiles cost a lot of money and you know, I mean, we're not sending them tanks, they're not running around with M1A ones and stuff, right? Um, I don't know what the money's being spent on. You know, it's not my thing, you know. I hope it's being spent.

You're not saying what you thought you would see with that. No, I mean, I thought initially listening to some of those talks and speeches about giving them money was to help them fight the war. To me, warfighters fight wars and warfighters need gear. So, yes, I get it. Some of this other high-level stuff is obviously important. But so are boots on a guy's feet when it's October going into winter in Ukraine. So is a rifle for a guy who's supposed to be able to go to war, right? I mean a place for him to put his magazine. We were training guys that put magazines and pocket and pockets

They were okay. Well, yeah, it goes to bullets and all that's okay Well, these guys were running around with one magazine because that's all they could have one magazine That's what 20 rounds in the AKs, 47. Yeah, 30 rounds. 30? Yeah. And so it's like, you know, and I don't need, I am my inventory of where my tax money's going.

I don't need that, right? I mean, we should have it, you could argue, but I don't need that. But I'm there. Our guys are there. We should definitely see a change in the tides with. The special operations guys, which you think would, some of the money would go to

Every time we go over there the guys we work with say hey, can you guys get us this? Can you guys get us that we need two of these? Can you help us get this and it could be everything from drones to chest rigs to Various other things we'll say. Iar type stuff, strobes, phones. Like, hey, we need phones to communicate

with each other because we know our radios. Holy, the special operation, Gina does not have fucking radios. It's just all kinds of things that they want, that you're thinking like, that should be issued gear. Backpacks? I need a day pack. I can't even get a day pack.

How many day packs did you get to choose from? This big one, this small one, this one I could dive with, this one I could jump. Right? I mean, how many packs could you choose from? This one I'm going, long range, whatever, right? I mean, you have no place to put all this gear in your locker or whatever. And they are asking me, why am I giving

Ukrainian intelligence soldiers a backpack? I mean, I'll do it a hundred times over, you know. You make your question. But why do I have to do it? And why is there, you know, like, can we get a couple of backpacks with the $60 billion, you know, can we shave off a couple backpacks? Yeah. And I get it. That's a silly thing to say, but like...

No, it's not. It's not a fucking silly thing to say. These guys don't have the equipment they need to take their fucking country back. And the money is not showing up where it needs to be. And with the Legion thing, there are a lot of guys who are going over there and, you know, they're, they're, they're ready to do something. Some of them are just sticking out, you know, and I don't know what their home situation is like or whatever, but they're sticking out, hoping they can make a difference.

Some of them are like, I'm not doing this. Like, I came here to help. And now you're telling me you sit on my hands. You know, I think this would actually be a really good time to get Yuri up here. I wanted to push that more towards the end. And I wanted to go over some of these missing Marines and soldiers on the US side that have been captured by Russia, but we'll cover that after we talk to Yuri.

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That's bubsnatrals.com promo code Sean for 20% off your order. Let's get back to the show. Yuri. Sean. Welcome. So you are the whole reason that Mark and the Overwatch Foundation, even one into Ukraine, kind of started as an idea. And we got that whole backstory the first time I interviewed him and I just want to say it's I've been dying to meet you I'm glad you came out and I really look forward to picking your brain on what's been going on over there but where were you when this whole thing kicked off with Russia invading your country? So I was at home, I was asleep already,

I went to bed earlier, and my wife just woke me up. She's like, it's all happening right now. She's like in tears and crying. And I was like, I was in shock, like woke up because I never faced war in my life. I'm like, just a regular guy. So I was a simple regular guy. And I was shocked. And-to-face war in my life. I'm like, just a regular guy. So, I was a simple regular guy.

And I was shocked. And until we went there, like, all the time was just on the phone. Like, on the phone, checking on my sister. I just called them right away. So, like, hey, make sure you have that emergency bag ready. Just make sure you're like, because I didn't know what to expect.

How many family members you have over there? Your home is in Illinois, correct? Yes, so in America, just me, my wife and my daughter, just three of us. Everybody else is in their own country. Okay. Okay. What is your, as the war has developed,

it's come a long way, it's a lot of new developments have come out. What is your opinion on how the war is being run on the Ukrainian side? So it's kind of hard for me because I didn't understand, I didn't know what's war, right? Like I said, I didn't know what's war, but like obviously talking to guys like Mark and everybody else like on Overwatch and talking to guys in Ukraine, like, I was talking to them every day. I talked to guys who's in the front line,

who's getting ready, who got wounded, injured, like all day as I talked to them. So the way I see it, we're doing so great things, we're advancing, we're taking stuff back, and we're fighting back with the world, like helping us, like we're really like using the weapon that we're getting But I do realize it's not gonna be quick and it's not gonna be like fast

It's it's not gonna be a done like by let's say by winter It won't be a more happen and I think the people in Ukraine they started understanding it too Because they just start to live their lives Like they just like okay, this is what it is. This is new reality, we just have to adapt to this. Are you happy with the response from the Ukrainian people with how they're reacting to all of this?

Yes and no. What are you happy about? So I'm happy about how they're trying to help UAF, Ukrainian Armed Forces. They're doing really great stuff. So Ukrainians were basically collecting money for a birector, which is the drones that the Turkish making, making the drones, like you can drop bombs and stuff like that. Ukrainians donated money in two days over a million dollars

out of their own pockets to buy those three drones. So Ukrainians are really supportive right now. Like they're trying to help. But other people, I've heard like on the last trip, what I've heard people just said, like, there's no bombing here, there's no war here. There's no what? There's no bombing here, no ship, like basically. There's no what? There's no bombing here, no shit,

like basically bombs are not like coming into this, down this region, so there's no war here. Okay. Which is like crazy to understand. And they don't realize, like they think like, some, some people even saying like, oh, I never sent you there. Cause like, you know, soldiers are there

of the frontline and they fighting and they're like, oh, I never send you there. Because soldiers are there, the frontline, and they're fighting. And they're like, oh, I never sent you there. So why would I care about you? But this is all like elderly people, like all their mentality, like you as a side mentality, communist mentality. Now, younger generation, they're trying to support, like, and do everything because like, look, if I cannot serve, like at least I'm going to do something

for the for those guys because they there they like sleeping on the ground that I have something that I have like we have to be honest like Ukraine like just getting to to be like trying to reach Western world and trying to be on that level right so we're going to have that ammunition we're going to have that gear we're going to have stuff. So people buying out of their own pockets, right? And Ukrainians, I think in the future it would be cool to have a film or even a book about how volunteering movement going into Ukraine, because there is a saying that people even say like, there's no such thing that Ukrainian volunteer cannot get in this world. We recently, like, a couple of months ago, we bought the satellite and asked us to different satellites so we can get like better pictures. Like which is crazy. Yeah. It's like I'm happy about that. I'm happy but the the younger generation

realized like hey we have to look west. We have to stop looking east. We have to turn our back to east like Russia and Belarus like all those countries because they behind, they behind, really behind. And they are looking for a freedom. Like especially me and being here for 11 years, I started understanding what is freedom. Like I do understand from talking like to good people, good guys, freedom is something that you don't get for free. So right now it's time to earn your freedom. Wow.

So I'm happy about that. Not happy, but we still have all that corrupted people because the reason why we go through Overwatch and we have an office in Ukraine, Overwatch, sister company basically, Overwatch Ukraine, that's what they call. The reason for having that, because we didn't want to send the supplies through somebody, because we know it's going to get robbed, steal, all the corruption stuff, it's still going on. Like, I mean, I love Ukraine.

I'm Ukrainian, like, in my soul, right? But I have to be honest. I cannot just wear those, like, pink glasses, like, and be like, oh, everything's super cool, like, we're fighting. Yes, we're taking losses. We're taking losses, and people steal stuff. And it's sad. That's what's not happy about.

Are you happy with how your government is, I guess not your government, are you happy with how the Ukrainian government is handling all the funding in the war as a whole? Because talking to Mark, he seems to me that Mark is very for the Ukrainian people, and he's very unhappy with the way that the Ukrainian government is handling the funding from the U.S., from Europe, from the U.K. how they're handling all these foreign fighters showing up at the foreign Legion to... I would say...

I would say... I see what you're saying. I would say I'm like 60-70% happy with what they're doing. You are. I'm not fully satisfied because we actually had just recently this conversation with Mark. Like, if God forbid something like that happens here, like it would be kicked out like that in the moments. Like the enemy will be out of this country,

like never would something happen this way, right? Over there, they just trying to be crapped it. Like to be honest with you, when the revolution started in 2013, the whole thing started. I was like super excited about that because now I'm like excited, kind of like quote, because I thought like, okay, it's time to wipe the oldies like US's armamentality, coming this out of my country. So we can start living

good. Like we can join Europe, EU, we can join Europe, we can live those standards. But it looks like they are so deep in a government that it's really, really hard to get them. It's still corruption going on. Like they're still stealing stuff. Like the amount of money and supplies we're getting, it's ridiculous. I think it never something like that happened in history. Like it's just crazy amount of money.

The whole world is helping you. And I just don't know how people can steal it this time. How can they can steal it this time. How can they can take it? Yeah. What do you think the biggest fear, what is I guess, what are some of the biggest fears that the Ukrainian people have? You got the nuclear weapons, you know, which is on the entire, the whole world's watching this. What are they? How scared are they about that? So they are pretty scared, because there is a good reason to be scared.

Nuclear weapon is not a thing to joker out and Ukraine had in the history in 1986, the Chernobyl situation. Like so I'm like, my region where I'm from is pretty far away from Chernobyl, but through so I'm like, my region where I'm from, it's pretty far away from Chernobyl, but through the clouds and everything, all that radiation like traveled, and we have people like who've been suffering from that.

Like a little bit like people all there in me, like probably like two, three years older than me, they face the like problems with their health, like from radiation. So people do realize like what it is. It's a serious thing and it's a serious threat because I don't know. It's war like you can happen like if if if if Russian saying they can do it like and Technically and hypothetically they can they have ability to do that right and like today's even events like

showing us that They're not scared of anything. I don't know, they stoop it, they just like believe in themselves or they're such a propaganda going on in that country. I don't know what's the reason, but they're not scared. They like really can use it. And people are scared of that. Because where my wife from, it's not that far away from the plant, then the clear plant, there was like a lot of things going on around that. People were scared.

They're like, oh, we want to move to the west of Ukraine, because it's closer to the EU, and they think that the Russians won't shoot it, because it's too close to the EU, so they don't want to get into the fight. Directed with the EU and need to know all those countries. What is the reason I'm asking this stuff is because we only hear what the media wants to tell us.

And so you being from Ukraine, you kind of have a lot more feel on what the mentality is of the actual people of Ukraine versus what major news stations are telling us. What are some other concerns that the Ukrainian people have fear wise as far as maybe something along the lines of the nuclear weapons, chemical weapons? So I would say this. I would say yeah, nuclear would be the biggest one, right? But then just they don't know what's the future, right? Because they don't know how long the war is going on and the economy is collapsing right now.

Like it's collapsing, like I have to be honest, like when before the war, the currency rate was like $1 to 20, right now, on my last trip, it was 42 already. Oh wow. So it's double. And like our first trip, it was 31. So it's like slowly by crawling, going up, going up, and we don't have like shortages yet, but even going to like neighboring countries in EU, it's cheaper to buy like just groceries like it's cheaper to buy there than in

Ukraine at the moment, like which is which is insane because they they have yours like it's cheaper to buy there than in Ukraine at the moment, like which is insane because they have yours, like it's supposed to be a much more expensive, right? And it's cheaper and people just don't know what's gonna happen in the future. And also, like they cannot leave home, right? Ukraine has like, when the whole thing started, they left the country, but they, with the intention to come back,

they're not leaving for good. Yeah, they're the percentage of people who left for the intention to come back, they're not leaving for good. Yeah, they're the percentage of people who left for good. Like, okay, we're going when I come back. Most of the people want to come back because it's just like women and kids. So they came back and they don't know what to do. And they struggle because there's no work, right? There's no jobs, like it's very hard to find job.

And people who's working like, let's say law enforcement and like doctors, they scare too, because as we can see, those places getting bound, right? All they like, plans like the power plants, all this stuff, people are scared to go there too, because like, you don't know what to wait for, like you just don't know what to expect. So the power workers and the medical people are scared to go to work, because don't know what to wait for. Like, you just don't know what to expect.

So the power workers and the medical people are scared to go to work because they're still going to get bombed because it's a power facility. They're just don't know what to wait. They're like, what I know to expect, like, what's going to happen? I could be here tomorrow, could be now. You know, talking to Mark also, I didn't realize how much of a, I don't know if divide is the correct word, but Eastern Ukraine sounds like it's all under Russian influence. A lot of the people speak Russian there, a lot of the people are considered themselves Russians there.

What is the pulse of the Ukrainian people when it comes to, should you guys give up the land? No, you don't think you should. We don't. Is that the overwhelming majority of the Ukrainians? Yes, yes, there is like people who think that because like you said, but since the war started, like the whole nation just united, we're like, no, we're like, started, like the whole nation just united.

We're like, no, we're like, we don't wanna give it away. Like even Zelensky saying that, like we're gonna take hours back, like, and people believe in that. People wanna, like, we just wanna like, look, we just wanna be independent and free and just don't touch us, like, leave us alone. You know, like, we wanna be like here, we have our own country, beautiful country, beautiful soil, like beautiful

people, like just want to be free. Why are you taking us like? So the whole world, the whole country is united because of war. Yes, and it was, it was really divided, like central and eastern Ukraine was like really under Russian. Like it was like speaking Russian, like I remember. So my grandfather, he's from Central, like Central Ukraine. And I'm from Boston. So I grew up like as a Ukrainian, a Ukrainian, hardcore Ukrainian. And I remember once I came, we went on the tour to Viv,

and I came back home and I had like a little coffee mug, and it says like, thank God I'm not Russian. And my grandfather saw it. So he went straight to my mom. She's like, what kind of education is this? How are you raising your son? These are like Russians. They are brothers.

They are now in neighbors. So it was like that. But now, even my mom said, we're never going to forgive them. Never. They've done bad stuff to us before. But right now,'re never gonna forgive them. Never. Like, they've done bad stuff to us before, but right now, we won't forgive them. So, your job at Overwatch Foundation

sounds like a lot of it is translation. Translating, mark, and the team is saying when it comes to medical training, tactics, whatever they need translated, you're going to have a lot more of a gauge on how motivated the Ukrainian people are that you guys are training. Are they able to, what's the word I'm looking for? How much of this information are they taken in and how motivated are they to learn these tactics in the medical training?

So here's, so I'll split this into, okay? Because we've done three trips, so I'll split this into two. Like, first two trips. Most of the people who were trained were volunteers. The warhead, time to defend my country, time to grab some weapon, and time to do the good stuff, to what I'm supposed, what the man's supposed to do for his country and for his family. So it was like, those guys were like a sponge,

you know, like a little kid. Whatever you gave them, they were just absorbing it. Like absorbing it, like no tomorrow they've been training after, like after we left, like you can see it. Like you can see when the people train, like even if you leave. So it was like, it was crazy. Second time we came back, same thing. It was, it was crazy. Like people like really trying to do stuff that we show them. They realize that what we teach them, what Overwatch teach them, it's very useful and it's very easy.

It's not like old style, when they throw bunch of information on you and then you just get lost, you overrun with the information, you don't know what to do. You're like mixing stuff up in your head. So this is very effective, very useful. So in this third trip, it's already becoming mixed.

So probably like 25% is already kind of like taking it kind of like, you know, like you're here. Okay, I'm just like, I was told to be here. 75% is still like, they're good to go, they're ready to go, they're motivated, they see what's going on. But I think because of the action kind of slow down a little bit, it's going in a long way.

So you kind of slow down. People start being relaxed. They're getting used to it. That's me and my wife discussed, people getting used to war. They're real life-saving. Complacence. Yeah. They're like, OK, that's it.

So, and people being drafted right now people there is a patrols They're going outside and they just stop and they're like hey, let me see your paperwork I would our medic told me he got stopped and they check his paperwork So people getting stopped like like from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Just patrols, like two people just walking around, like, and they check paperwork, like your documents, and they can draft you, right? And that's what I think, like, that's a little problem right now.

Some major problem, but there is a little bit problem, because when you draft it and you volunteer, like, it's two different things. When you volunteer, you're super motivated. When you draft it, it's kind of like when you volunteer you super motivates when you draft it is kind of like somebody made you do this yeah, and It's sad, but those people like like what happened with with us when we came like they were like

Like joking around at the beginning like kind of like, oh, okay like because we were you know We're trying we're trying to praise them for good stuff. Cause then the first day they did good. But the new guys, like, who never, like, saw us, never meet us, they started, like, joking around. And we're just like, slamming like, hey guys, if you think you're so cool and you know, everything is time for jokes, like, we can go home. Like, we all have families who are volunteering here,

like, we're not, you know, like, we took off from work and stuff, like, if you want, we just go home. We all have families who are volunteering here. We're not, you know, we're, we took off from war and stuff. Like if, if you want, we just go home. And that kind of like put them back a little bit, put them in place. It's like, and I, I know their commander, I came to the commander and said, like, look, tomorrow we come, I don't want to see this anymore. Because this is like, I'm not here for this. Like, you guys need it. Like, I give you, we give you knowledge. So take the knowledge. Like, it's, we give you a knowledge, so take the knowledge. Like it's knowledge, it was been tested in a combat. Like so it's not like something in the books

that nobody knows what to do with that. It's practice. Like so take it. And it kind of changed a little bit, but still it was like kind of a little bit shocking to see that people like 25% like this, a 25% kind of like fooling it on. Which is what I was shocking for me.

Are Ukrainians worried about the energy prices that's about to happen? You know, those pipelines just were blown up going in from Russia to Germany. He said he's gonna turn the gas off this one or how worried are people of Ukraine about the power of situations? They are.

They are worried because they think they understand how catastrophic that's going to be. They have a slight understanding because prices went up like two years ago in Ukraine, like energy like prices went up a little bit and right now it's even worse. So just fresh information. Got a lot of bombing today, like recently today, this morning, from 5 o'clock to 10 p.m. 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. There is people sending messages in government saying that please shut it down like electricity.

Do not use as much electricity. Do not use those electrical heaters, boilers, and all that stuff. And try to do not use gas a electricity, not use those electrical heaters, boilers and all that stuff and try to do not use gas a lot because it's a lot of like a lot of pressure on the whole system, like energy system because like plants have to go to work crazy and they all being like hit. So people are realizing and they're realizing that prices will go out for sure. There's no no no question about that.

But people don't have that much money, right? Because of what? The economy collapsing. So they do understand it. Maybe not to the level of how it's going to be, but do understand. So for instance, my mom, we have a two-floor building at home. My mom bought a little electric heater and they turn on in different rooms just to get heat up, like warm it up a little bit and they shut it off for the night

and they just like like that till the morning and in the morning everybody go to work so there is no need until evening. So they're trying to to kind of save and get ready for this. Like so they have like one heater that just goes between rooms and they just turn on the gas just a little bit so the they're actually like batteries that they warm up so they just don't blow up because they full of water. We have like old system so they just don't blow up from from from ice water inside. Oh wow. So yeah they just do like and like if you need to take a shower, they're like, okay, we're gonna turn on this boiler today so everybody get ready for it like shower, like what

you had and stuff like that. Damn. How? How bad do you think it's gonna get? This winner. This winner? Do you think they're gonna make a major advance in the Ukraine this winner? Eraschens?

Mm-hmm. I mean... I don't think they're gonna like major. They're gonna be like, so I think my personal opinion is gonna be like a scenario of what it's going on since 2014. On a major scale, it kind of dies down. So the whole world, it kind of takes the attention away from it. But they still like bombing and shelling like once in a while, here you go, like, take these rockets, take these rockets here.

Like, now those Iranian drones over there, like a major problem. I was talking to people. It's been crazy problem because they, it's new. they didn't know what to do. Now they start adapting. I think, so one of the guys who I'm talking there, he, he told me that they were able to capture one drone, like undamaged, so they're trying to like take it apart and figure out like what's inside and how does it work so they can make progress with it like taking those downs because they cause a lot of problems now. And if they, if ration will keep bombing like plants, our like power plants, energy plants, that's gonna drain much more than just taking open fight with Ukrainian armed forces.

Would you like to see Ukraine become a little more aggressive? Yes. You would. Yes. I think so, that's my... We have this conversation as well, and just my understanding, like... We get all these weapons, right? All the funding and everything, but we take it on the conditions, right? There is certain conditions and I don't know those conditions of like all of them, right?

Like nobody knows them besides government and high high people over there, right? But I think they just don't let us to use it like to the full power and we still have this kind of mentality all which is gonna like slowly take it back take it back and Yes personally, I would like to see more aggressive. Like when you create start taking part like Harkiv Oblast, Hirson Oblast, the Parisian region, all those places like people who are super happy about that. It's like the whole Instagram reel and all friends just talking about this, because we started being aggressive, so Russians just like took off and they left,

and we started like taking back and taking our stuff, but it was just crazy. Like people were super happy. So everybody wants to be, you can't be a little bit more aggressive. Because the more aggressive you are, the faster it's all gonna end. And everybody's looking for faster ending of this world. Nobody wants it.

How would you like to see Ukraine become more aggressive? What would you like to see Ukraine become more aggressive? What would you like to see? Stuff that we do on a bigger scale. Like what the Overwatch is doing in Ukraine, just on a bigger scale. More training. More training for everyone, but like, for real training. And they do have, do get training. Like people go like, I know there's places in Europe where they train them and I know some people

like who's working on all their weapons, like they get trained, right? Because the beginning, nobody knows what I'll to use, like all like Javilins and laws, like and now like all this advanced weapon, right? Like and but like for all of them, right? Yeah, it's artillery war, right? It's a lot of artillery working and everything,

but we just just need to be more aggressive. Would you like to see Zelensky utilize these war fighters that have been coming from Canada, U.S., Great Britain, anywhere else? Utilize them more and take it out, maybe certain Russian positions. Cause they have a lot of experience. They do. And no, sitting on the sideline.

I would like, I see what you're saying. I would like them to get involved in more training Ukraine first, because so you would like to see Ukraine make all the advances and take out Russian positions. And you would like the foreign fighters to conduct all the advances and take out Russian positions and you would like the foreign fighters to conduct all the training. Yes, and I'll explain myself why. Here's a couple of reasons for that. First of all, because their experience is ridiculous, right?

Like, they have crazy experience. They know what what is. And they can teach soldiers, like, they just transfer knowledge, right? That's number one, because if we lose a good fighter who knows what war is, like, if we lose him on a battlefield and he didn't transfer knowledge, it's bad, you know. If he was able to change the knowledge, to transfer knowledge and become like commander of like, like, unit or some like that, you know, like, just shame people, show them how to do it. And I know it's happening. I know all those like volunteer

Like groups of people like who's doing like different tasks over there. They have like foreign fighters in it Like who's teaching them tactics and they've been advancing like they've been doing good stuff good work You know small units they just do the stuff that that they were taught by foreign religions. Now that's the number one reason. Number two reason, because my personal opinion, if rations will start seeing foreign fighters taking them out, and they will take them out. Rations, they're not strong. They're like from what I see and from what I hear, like rations, it's almost a joke, right? They have some technology, but they're a fighter, it's a joke. They're like from what I see and from what I hear like Russian army So some almost a joke right they have some technology. Yeah, but they're fighters. It's a joke

Come on But so these they can take them like pretty quick, I think but it's gonna cause like a big problem because That guy he will go crazy. He will start shooting everything and every single day because he's gonna be like oh everything and every single day. Because he's gonna be like, oh, whole world is helping you with the weapon, right? And now you actually have fighters. So they will start like playing this card like, oh, and it might be even like they're gonna start bombing somewhere in Europe, right?

Because like, oh, your fighters are fighting here. So we're defending ourselves. You know, so that's two reasons that I think the fighters should be involved in the training and helping Ukrainians to do that. And they're doing it just on a bigger scale, probably more advanced. Not advanced, no, it's a wrong word, more often, and between different units, instead of just going and taking a fight. What is your opinion of Zelensky?

Honestly, if I would see him, I'd probably like hockey, but I cry. Like, I have an honor to meet such a person, like in my life. Like, you have to understand that before he became a president, he was like, everybody had been saying like, he was a coming. Like, he was a coming. He came from like, all this comedy show in Russia like in 90s

and one day they just threw him out because he's like, so in order to open your own show, you have to ask them for a permission. He's like, oh, I'll open something on the site and they didn't grant him a permission. They said like, no, no, no, no, you're gonna be under us. You're gonna go do what we're saying, masko said. And he's like, you know what, guys, when I open my own company

and we'll do what we think is right. And he was super successful. But, you know, when all this things started, it's like, oh, I'll be the president after that show, right? He had like a show that he became a president. He started like, do good things. And it started, like, talking about like, yeah, I'll do it, I'll do it. Like people were thinking, oh, it's a joke.

Like, what is this? But he came and he started making things happening. So like, you can ask Mark, you can ask Tommy, you can ask Zach, like, what kind of roads in Ukraine? They're like, bad. So all Eastern and Central Ukraine, he did all the roles. They were perfect. Like America. Like amazing.

Now it's all gone, obviously. But he did stuff. He said something, he did it. And people, like, and especially after what happened right now, like after war, and how he stood up, like, like's it's almost like like everybody like having in their own home like the I don't need ammo I don't need the right I need ammo like so that's what people just keep saying this they're like they are amazing and he's doing great yes he's team probably he had some like scumbags in his team and some rats that not doing great and screwing him over but he

is a person he's a leader he took the whole over, but he is a person and he is a leader. He took the whole country and he is leading a country. And he is like saying, like, no, I am not scared. Yeah, Ukraine is big, but like much smaller than Russia, right? But he is like, oh, I am not scared, I am going. He is not scared to call all the presidents, prime ministers of different countries and talking to them. Yes, he is asking for a lot of money, but personally him, he's not gonna steal that money.

You don't think he is? I don't think he is. He was pretty wealthy at the time he became a president, because he was super successful. I don't think personally him is still a man. And no one in that country, like who I know, like who I talk to, no one thing that way. They just, they really amazing. They,'re not happy like like with government, right?

Because they they make a mistakes with the he's team. Let's say not government I don't want to talk about everyone like but you know about his team. There's like scumbags there They do bad stuff. They do still money. They do like lobby what they want But him in general like you know, he cannot be everywhere, he cannot do everything, that's why he has a team. So, and he's cleaning stuff up, a stuff up, like basically a couple of months ago, he fired the SBU, head of SBU,

which is like, Sluzba Bespakil Krayin, which is a protective service to Ukraine, kind of like special you know, special forces of Ukraine. The head of it, he fired it because there was like bunch of like, people in the region, like workers, right? They were betrayers. They just been sending in photo-rations, and they started working on it. Like, they are like, okay, you're not doing good job.

Like, how come like so many of your work is betrayed this country So you out next he's not scared. He's like on his second day of being a president He came to parliament said like okay guys. Thank you very much. You're done Next people. I need new people. I need people who wants to work who's not scared to work and who's ready to go Like and and I think he's been pretty successful, not 100% obviously, but I think he was pretty successful. Well, that's good. I'm actually surprised to hear that.

It's good that you have that much faith in him. Yeah, like a lot of Ukrainians. The most important thing that they said, he didn't leave the country, so he was like, he stayed, like all those country, so he was like, he stayed. All those days, he stayed there. In the worst days of the beginning of World War Days, he stayed there. And the second best thing about him, he united the whole country.

Yes, like you said, we were divided. And he just united. And that's what the strong leader and good leaders should do. First of all, he has to unite everyone. And I'm like, hey, this is the direction we're going. Let's go everybody. What are you heading back over? When or where?

When or even back to Ukraine. So, like I just recently came back, like what, two, like three days ago. And right now we're just, we're gonna like come back and just get money. Like we need to get the nations. As soon as we have money to go there, because we don't want to show up over there with empty hands.

Right? Training is great, it's amazing, but you need to bring stuff as well. You have to care of boys who come with you. Because those people, they just found Tearo, so you have to help them. So we need money for that like just so you understand like how what kind of like impact over what she's doing right now like we found the people in New Hampshire who donated 30 pallets of medical gowns 30 pallets which is like over 30,000 people 30 30,000 pieces, sorry, which is didn't have

a money to take it and deliver to Ukraine, to all the hospitals and everything. Like I found another foundation, like another nonprofit who was able to do it and I connected them and all this stuff in Ukraine already. It's been picked up like in a week and everything went there, but it's like 30 pounds. We found a guy who messaged us and who helped us, is like, I can get you 1,600 combat boots. For the price, no one can beat. No one can beat that price.

It's like, I'll do it for you like now, which is then have a money. I had to connect again, like I had to find the people, like a month like Ukrainian nonprofits in U.S. so they can take care of it, like take it and like buy it right away. They bought it right away. This week it's going to Ukraine over. What do you think the people need the most? If you had an endless bank account, what would you bring? The one item that you would bring the volunteers or Ukrainian military? What

is the one item that if you had in your bank account? I see the question like it's it's pretty hard question Probably like I'll say gear What kind of gear just clothing first of all and all, and second of all, like, all the... what's his name? All the, like, plate carriers, plate... Tactical gear. Yeah, tactical gear, orders, stuff, whatever. Just that, because, like, look, we're getting, like, artillery, right?

Like, the whole world is sending us. But who's gonna take care of the soldiers? Just regular guys. And so, people so people saying like, oh, you're getting paid a lot of money for being on the front line. And one of the guys, he posted a picture on Instagram. He posted a picture of himself in the whole game.

He's like, that's where my money is. That's where I spend my money on. Right? And just tactical gear, yeah, that would be amazing. And tactical gear and probably like, like I flex and stuff like that medical gear Obviously like medical gear has to be always there because I mean We were not like and it's hard to say because I never served right but we were we don't have said this kind of knowledge Now it's a lot of changing, but you have to realize it's gonna take time to break the USSR and communist standards

and bring it to the modern world. Like even you saw the IFAX that we brought, right? Amazing, amazing stuff. I've seen like doctors, I've been talking to combat doctors over there and they're like, this is great, this is amazing. It's very compact, you can put it where you need it, not gonna get dirty, but people didn't know how to use it.

Like, some people who's trying to buy it here, they buy them crappy stuff and send it. They don't know how to use it. They don't know what to do with that. So, like, yeah, well, just go back. Sorry, I got off the track a little bit. Just go back to your original question. Yes, technical gear for the guys, because winter is coming. then you gear, right?

Like clothes, like some warm gear and medical, yes. That would be two, two the most important things, I think, at the moment. Roger that. Do you have anything else you want to say for a bring Mark back on? I mean, I just want to thank Overwatch, I want to thank you and I want to thank all the guys who helped us because you have to realize, I came here when I was 21, right?

And I had this, I didn't know what freedom is. I thought I did, but I did not. Because here we were free, independent, but we are not all the way free. Now here, talking to you veterans, especially at our gym, I talk to law enforcement, I talk to veterans, and see what they do. I just want to say thank you, because you taught me how it is, like what freedom is and how it's supposed to be. And yes, like it's like right now, especially right now, at this time, we have our own problems here, like in US, right?

But standards are still high. Standards for people being a human being and it's like, hey, this guy needs help. Got it. It's too dark, going to help. Yeah, thank you for that. Thank you for changing my mindset and changing my mentality in that.

Because I'm not 100% there, because it's hard, it's gonna take time. But understanding why this country is free and so successful, right? Even with the bad stuff as well. Like, we're still successful because we're doing great, because of the people, not because of who's there, just because of people. Yeah. All right, Yuri.

Well, hope to see you again and good luck over there. Thank you. You better need it. Thank you. Cheers. Thanks. Thanks. I wanna give a big thank you out right now

to all the vigilance elite patrons out there that are watching the show right now. Just wanna say thank you guys. You are our top supporters and you're what makes the show actually happen. If you're not on vigilance lead patron, I wanna tell you a little bit about what's going on in there.

So, we do a little bit of everything. There's plenty of behind the scenes content from the actual Sean Ryan show. On top of that, basically what I do is I take a lot of the questions that I get from you guys or the patrons and then I turn them into videos. So we get right now, there's a lot of concern about self-defense, home-defense, crimes on the rise,

all throughout the country, actually, all throughout the world. And so we talk about everything from how to prep your home, how to clear your home, how to get familiar with a firearm, both rifle and pistol. For beginners and advanced, we talk about mindset, we talk about defensive driving, we have an end of the month live chat that I'm on at the end of every month where we can talk about

whatever topics you guys have. It's actually done on Zoom. You might enjoy it. Check it out. And if Zoom's not your thing, or you don't like live chats, like I said, there's a library of well over 100 videos on where to start with prepping, all the firearm stuff. Pretty much anything you can think of it's on there. So anyways go to www.patrion.com slash vigilance elite or just go on the link in the description it'll take you right there and if you don't want to and you just want to continue to watch the show that's fine too. I appreciate it either way love you all Let's get back to the show. Thank you. All right, Mark, you and Yuri have some very different opinions on what's going on over there. Definitely. It's interesting. You said that was going to happen, but it was interesting to hear

the difference of opinions. But what I want to kind of move into now before we wrap this up is several months ago, I think maybe you'd been back there one or two more times since the, since our initial show, was some of the US fighters that were either killed or captured or on E&E over there. And I was hoping you could talk a little bit about that. Yeah, there's been, I think at one time there was over 800 people in a Russian POW camp and some of them were actually Western fighters that had went over with the Legion. I don't have any affiliation or connection to the Ukrainian foreign Legion. I have helped some guys find their way there. They've asked, I've helped them find their way there. And I've talked to some guys guys That have that are serving there or have served there. I don't have the actual any kind of connection there

We got involved in a kind of Trying to help locate and recover a marine Captain former marine captain, scout sniper platoon commander, who was MIA over there. Some Marines that knew him and had served with him had reached out to me and our organization and said, hey, can you help?

Give us the whole rundown ever then that happened. They were very thorough. They're obviously really trying to find this marine. You know, kind of combat action reports of the engagement in which he went missing. What were those reports? They were reports, after action reports from people who were actually there.

During the firefighting and during the engagement, I'm not going to mention anybody's names obviously, but they basically were in a forward OP. OP is an observation point. Yeah, and they were doing a reconnaissance on a Russian unit that was in their area. And they were discovered and were attacked with small indirect fire. And I believe some kind of like small scale ambush type stuff, but it wasn't like an ambush where anyone was assaulting through them or anything.

It was just basically people firing at them and then some indirect fire. And you know, we at all the kind of satellite imagery. We had some very, you know, I had recordings of interviews of some of the other guys that were there and we were helped. We were working with a team who was helping trying to piece some of this together to try and locate this guy. And it was kind of needle in a haystack stuff because you have to remember like when it comes to something like the foreign legion, there's many people who have a bad connotation about guys that go and do something like that, right? But here was a, you know, a Marine captain who was very well trained, right? School trained sniper, who had a stellar service record. I've seen it, right? They sent it to me.

They wanted me to not think that they were just Rando's who were looking for help with something that was silly, like, to legitimize the whole thing and us getting involved. So I mean, he was a legit guy with a legit background just trying to help the way that he could, right, which was actually going out there and taking what he had learned as a Marine Corps officer and trying to help this whole situation. And you know, I don't think, to me, he's an American Marine, overseas MIA. It doesn't really matter that he's working with their foreign Legion, like none of that

kind of stuff. The foreign Legion seemed to kind of, I don't want to say abandon the whole thing of trying to recover him, but they weren't really too interested in putting a lot of effort into it. Not like if one of our guys went MIA during an engagement, we'd be going to go find them, right? I mean, obviously, think of guys like Marcus Latreau and his team and these kind of guys. We don't do that to people.

We go get them and even if God forbid someone turns up, KIA, we go get them too. We don't leave bodies laying around. It's just not what we do. I learned kind of quickly that other countries don't really feel the same way that we do about that, unfortunately. So there wasn't much help from that side of things to get it done. There still was Russians in the area, Russian units in the area, and that obviously made people really not interested in going back in there to find him.

And in my opinion, and this is just my opinion, if anyone's watching this and has any kind of connection to this situation, this is nothing more than my opinion, I'm not trying to hurt anybody or anything. I think one of two things happened. I either think from everything I've saw, read, everyone I've talked to, including some active duty intelligence people that were helping with the project of trying to locate this guy, that he either was MIA

because he was wounded during that engagement and crawled off the X and possibly succumbed to his wounds somewhere in undercover. Or he was taken as a POW. Which doesn't really seem to make sense to me as much because if Russia had a American Marine officer, you'd think they would be prading him around somewhere. But it's possible that prison complex is so big

and there's so many different people. And this guy wasn't talking a lot that he could just be lost in the shuffle of POWs. It's still actively ongoing but it's definitely much colder than it was closer to when it happened but we were you know definitely involved and still are trying to pull some threads on finding him and making sure he's okay. Even to the point where I've committed to, if we can even find God forbid the worst has happened, if we can find him, I don't care. I'll go with a team and we'll go get him and bring him back. You know, just because I don't, I don't think we should leave people over there. And I don't think anybody else will go get him. So we'll go get him.

Are you personally attached to this gentleman? No, no, no. How many other Americans do you think have been captured killed? I don't know exactly. I know there's been, um, I know there have been people in the foreign legion that have been taken prisoner and killed obviously because they were doing a lot of the fighting initially and I know of a couple of guys and spoke to some guys in the legion where yeah they were they were seeing a lot of action

and then all of a sudden they had kind of the rug pulled out from under them. You know, it seemed to me in my personal opinion. They were going out on these kind of recon missions to just kind of put observation posts up and report back or like I mentioned before they were doing that. They were heavily being involved in doing that landmine, planting the landmines. And then I think they just were finding things to do as well as you would, right? Like, okay, let's engage and let's, you know, go a little farther. I don't know if that pissed off some of the foreign Legion leadership and and that made them pull those guys back You know because they kind of were doing more like out there It was supposed to be let's say an observation post kind of set up or a

Recompert role turning into let's go poke a hornet's nest kind of thing and I don't know if that pissed people off and they pulled them back because of that Or if they've pulled them back for some other reason. But it does seem like a lot of those units, they were keeping the Brits and Americans and Canadians together. Obviously for language reasons and all this kind of stuff, similar tactics, that kind of thing. And those units, at least in my opinion, seemed to be pretty effective with some pretty good experience. But for whatever reason, they kind of pulled

back and shelved and told to sit on their hands and, you know, that kind of stuff. Interesting. Very interesting. You know, I asked you a re about what he thought, you know, I asked Yuri about what he thought, you know, if he would like to see Ukraine become a little more aggressive and he'd lean really into the training, taking this with a grain of salt because you're the war fighter and Yuri is not. But he thinks it should be Ukrainianserinians out there doing it. Not foreign guys. He would like to see the foreign guys doing more of what Overwatch is doing and training people and not. I thought that was an intelligent response.

Yeah, I agree. Yeah, you know, I agree. And, you know, I can't really see the argument in the beginning of, hey, we don't have money Okay, well now you have money, right? But they don't have the training and again, I don't I'm not gonna sit around and listen to the excuse of well, that's just not the way we do things Or we don't know how there are many people that can teach you how right?

I mean put it this way at this point you're a can teach you how yeah I mean, put it this way, at this point, Yuri can teach you how. Yeah. We have that joke that like, you know, many civilians now are actually going out and I think doing a great thing and trying to learn how to defend their household or, you know, defend themselves and their families, whether it's with firearms or empty hand or, you know,

just these kind of things and they're spending a lot of money on a lot of classes to learn these techniques and these tactics. It's like you're a good teacher. After especially advanced infantry type tactics, all that kind of stuff. I mean, he's translated everything for me and Tommy and Zach and Rob and, you know, I mean, he could throw him on a Marine recon team

and he'd be just fine. As far as tactics go because he's been exposed to a lot of it since February. I think that's the key and look, it doesn't even have to be me that does it. This is not about me, it's not about Overwatch or anything like that. It's about the thing I just can't get over is you have this massive group of people, citizens of that country that don't want this going on in their country. I mean, it's horrendous. The atrocities that are happening, their whole way of life's been changed and they want to do something about it. And so many of them, especially the males, sign up for the military, they get drafted into the military

to Essentially be in a position where they can do something and it kind of stops there because you know, they're not being trained properly and so then of course you can't put them in that role and if it's a leadership thing where you just don't know how, if you're the country of Ukraine, I am sure, you know, obviously you have the rest of the Western world ready and willing to help you. I know it gets sticky when you talk about sending active military people to foreign countries to train and I understand the global kind of politics of it all But there are other ways they could reach out that government the Ukrainian government

Ukrainian military could reach out and get training for their men You know again if they do ask me I'll do it on a larger scale. I'll create a basic training for them. I'll create an infantry school For them with the men that we have and the infrastructure that we have. Even if it's something as simple as, here's a curriculum and here's a couple guys to run it. If they just don't know how, that's okay. There's no, I mean, at this point with what's going on in their country, it's not a time for ego, it's not a time for, this is how we've always done it. Because how you've always done it's not working.

Like you're not winning this war right now. You're not. And to say you are and to have all these cruel little videos on social media and on all these Ukrainian government and all these, what you do is propaganda, right? We're talking about like I've been there. I've seen it I've seen these people. I've seen what's happening. It's like that's not real What's happening in your country's real and you need to you need to fix it like the winter is coming

That adds a whole new dynamic right to how this thing is gonna go I don't think there'll be a lot of movement in the winter there I think people will sit on their hands more and they'll be more artillery and they'll be that kind of stuff. So I don't really see them saying, winter's coming. Let's get pumped up to push these guys out of our country. I don't see that. Do you think, do you think Russia's gonna tone it up a notch when winter comes?

I think Russia just needs to keep doing what they're doing. I think if Russia, the longer this goes, the more it benefits Russia. And that's been attacked. They've used in every word they've ever fought in, right? Or tried to use. If they can drag this out, it benefits them. You know, they have the money. They have the support from China.

They have the support from Iran. You know, the Ukrainian military shot down an Iranian drone a few weeks ago, a drone, an armed drone. And so you're like, they have the support they need. They just need to keep going and look if they continue to target these civilian cities. When that happens in Ukraine, it's devastating for those people. I mean, it's devastating no matter where it happened But it really does affect them on a huge level Even if it's nowhere near their cities, right? I mean that thing happened this morning and He's been uneasy today because of that. It's a real real thing and I if I was Russia, and I'm playing the bad guy,

look, they're targeting the civilian cities. They have been since the beginning, and they think it's done about it. You know, now if you attack civilian cities and I punch you in the mouth, you're gonna think twice about attacking the civilian cities. It's not happening to them. So they can just do this.

And I think Russia's thought right now is if they do anything too crazy, like if they do fire, if Ukraine does retaliate and fire back into Moscow or into some Russian city on the other side of the border in Russia, well, we can just dangle that threat of a tactical nuclear weapon, you know, and the stuff has been going on recently here with Biden talking about how he's really worried about this and all that kind of stuff. And it's like, that becomes a real threat. And then the political pressure gets turned on in Ukraine from the rest of the world.

Like, you can fight them, but don't do anything too crazy. Like don't really pest them off. And again, if they're in my country and you're, you're my support system and my support system is telling me, fight back, but don't do anything too crazy. It's just that's a very, how are you supposed to really get things done? I mean, anything too crazy, I need to do what it takes to get these guys out in my country. Yeah. Should be the response. So it's very, very complicated

that way. And if you know, if Ukraine stays away enough to where it keeps the West happy, that doesn't mean that Russia is not going to use a tactical and nuclear weapon somewhere. Yeah, right. You know, I've, I've, if Putin was smart, I think he would be making a move this winter. He, those pipelines are gone. He's going to turn the gas off. He said he's going to turn the gas off. That's going to create a major energy crisis all throughout

Europe and Ukraine. It will be very smart of him to have a follow on plan. You know what I'm going to get to. Yeah, and I think no one's going to do anything about that. I mean, no one's done anything, including the Ukrainians against anything Russia's done. I mean, they're, yes, they are law-bending, they are tillery thing. My opinion when it happened, the first time during the pullback, and this was during the pullback when there was still Russians in and around Kiev, right? Then they pulled back once, and they pushed

out a little bit, and now they've recently pulled back again. Those pullbacks, I think, are the time where if you're Ukraine, you drive into them. They're moving back for whatever reason. We talked about that earlier. Is it just a logistical thing, and they're trying to consolidate to support those forward lines,

and you just need those lines tighter for the mismanagement that you have? It doesn't really matter at that point. If I'm on the Ukraine side and I'm seeing that big of an orchestrated pullback, I'm pushing into that pullback. I mean, that's just, I mean, that's basic, basic chess, basic anything when it comes to tactics, right? I mean, if they're really pulling back and let's just say it is because of disorganization,

then why not drive into them at that point? They're the ones that are in your country. Yeah. And they're moving out of that space. I mean, don't take that opportunity to roll into that town on tanks with flags on top and everybody cheering and just to post it on Instagram and make it look like you're winning the war.

Go win the war. Yeah. What's your opinion of Zelensky posting for Vogue? I think he's just trying to do anything he can to get support for the country. Do you think that was a good move? I don't. I don't think it was needed. I don't know what it does. Like I don't know. I mean, what's the objective here, right? You're is the objective to win the war. Then when you wake up in the morning and you scratch your balls and you brush your teeth, you should be thinking about what it's gonna take to win that war until you have to lay down because you're tired for that day and then repeat, repeat, repeat.

And I don't know if that affects that outcome of trying to win the war. I mean, they had all those funny memes when the hurricane came of Zelensky in a little kind of lifeboat with a life jacket on talking about he's going around for Myers asking people for donations and stuff. And I mean, it's kind of getting to that point like you're talking about, right? That's the equivalent of him posing in vogue. I don't know the guy, I don't know his politics.

I don't care, right? I don't like him, I don't like him. I just think that I do like in the beginning of the war, I liked him being out there. I like him not leaving the key, right? I like him staying in there. I like him showing that like I'm here, we'll be here. I like that. I like that forward facing kind of like I'm here with the people.

Kind of reminded me a little bit of President Bush at 9-11. And I'm not a big fan of presidents going to different crisis areas and all this, like hurricanes and all this, but that was different. 9-11 was obviously a little different. And I thought that was good. Like, hey, I'm here. We're going to do this. And I like to, in Zolanski, did it. I just don't like the kind of, I'll do anything now for a dollar, you know, because he sees what it's like to get money now and it's like, oh, I can get more, I can get more, I can get more, I just, I don't like that because I don't think it really helps. I think what he needs to do is focus on the military. There's no way that that guy looks at his military and thinks he has

looks at his military and thinks he has something that could be considered a dominant fighting force, even within the, I'm not talking about within the world, I'm talking about within the conflict he's in. They're not a dominating fighting force. And if I was him or I was a high level military commander, which I've never been, my thought and my, like the next step I would take would be to create what I have, turn it into a, like a fight and force that can dominate this conflict that I'm in and get these people out in my country come September so that on October 10th, the thing that happened this morning doesn't happen. This morning, 75 rockets, one end, the civilian villages in New York.

All over Ukraine, yeah. Is there any, uh, Dizari, we got a head gown on that? I haven't, I haven't looked, I've been lucky enough to spend the day with you and haven't really been on my phone checking that kind of stuff, so. Love you, you. So yeah, that's kind of what I would do.

I mean, I get it. There seems to be a big PR thing with him. He comes from that kind of background. I get it. I don't think it's terrible. I just wouldn't really do it. I don't think it. I think their key is training.

And I think they need to get the fight and force that they have to the level where they can Push that opposing force out Especially because it seems like the West is putting some rules on them on what they can do and can't do right? Yeah, I Got another question for you and then we'll wrap this up Coming out of Ukraine. this is just personal opinions, and it's got nothing to do with Ukraine,

but I guess maybe a little bit, but this Russia-Ukraine conflict has unveiled this new alliance that's forming between Russia, China, Iran, Korea, could be missing some, but those are all enemies of the United States. And we're seeing NATO, and we're seeing this new alliance being formed, is that alarming you at all?

Yeah, I mean, I was very worried because we talk about the money, the $60 billion reportedly that we've given over the course of this whole thing we as in the United States. That's not including the rest of the Western world, right? That's just us. That's a lot of money. Why would we give that much money? Why would it be, I understand supporting another government, another military, especially in time of conflict, but that's a lot of money, Sean. Like that's not just, hey, we supported them. You supported them how much?

Six, eight, six billion. That's a sixty billion, right? To me, that's more than a sign of support. That's proxy. That's us fighting China in a proxy type thing. It's not even about Russia anymore because I think if you work to any kind of US intelligence or any kind of government level, including, you know, our elected government, you can see based on what's come out of this conflict with Ukraine that Russia really isn't as big of a worry as we thought they were. They are on the nuclear side obviously because they have that. But from a conventional ground to air type issue, even on the water, they just seem, it's almost like Keystone cops type stuff.

It's comical. It's ridiculous and it's ridiculous that we've been worried about them for so long, you know So this is more than Ukraine against Russia. It's almost getting to the point now where we're fighting this proxy war in Ukraine against Iran and China You know, and I hope the future of the United States and how we do defense of our beliefs and our values and what we do on a foreign scale isn't done by this kind of proxy type stuff. We've always done proxy stuff for a long, long time.

And even when I was in Iraq and you were in Iraq type stuff. You know, we've always done proxy stuff for a long, long time. And, you know, I mean, even when I was in Iraq and you were in Iraq, a lot of it was like that. Many of the people we were fighting were not Iraqi insurgents. They're from New Jordan, Syria, all this kind of place, right? It was a place to go and fight the Americans. But when you're talking, okay, if we have a problem with China, and we need to take that, that problem needs to get some kind of resolution, I'm not talking about all that war with China, and we need to take that problem, needs to get some kind of resolution. I'm not talking about all-out war with China, but something needs to happen.

I don't think our way of doing it should be these little proxy things with other nations. We should step outside and handle it like the man we're supposed to be. And I'm not talking about all-out war. I'm not a war monger. I'm just saying, if we have a problem, let's do it. Let's not do it in Ukraine. Let's address it.

Yes, and let's get it out there in the open, and if it causes some kind of geopolitical uneasiness, then that's okay. Let's have that to avoid war. And I get it, you could say, well, we are avoiding war. But we're helping with war on other people. And especially with these characters that you mentioned, if something has to happen, look at Russia, they're not fighting the Ukrainian army all the time. They're killing innocent civilians.

That's not war. We would never do that. And why are we tolerating that? And why are we participating in that? Ukraine's probably going to have to give up a lot to end this thing. You kind of mentioned that earlier, that's not for me to say, like I know there's been a lot of American commentators

being like, look, they offer, I'm pretty simple, give them this, give them that, divide this up, make sure this, they can never join NATO, all this kind of stuff. I don't think it's for us to impose that on another people. You know, to draw a line and be like, all of a sudden, you guys on this side of the line, your Russians know.

Like it's not Jim Class, we're not picking teams for dodgeball, right? And I don't think we should have a say in that, and I don't have an opinion on that. But something like that is more than likely gonna happen. I don't know if that just makes Russia end this thing. I don't know, I don't think so because I don't think this is about Ukraine and Russia.

Yeah. A lot of people, a lot of people are very concerned that this is going to spark World War III. Well, I think it was about Ukraine and Russia in the beginning, last time we spoke, but again, the opportunity presents itself and opportunists then see, you know, like if you want to talk about Iran, China, North Korea, especially Iran and China in this case, they see, oh, we can get involved

in this and it's going to benefit us. You know, even on the way of, well, look, they're giving all their money to these people. That given away $60 billion weekends, our country, significantly weekends our country. And it will for a couple of generations. You don't just grow $60 billion on a tree. So helping Russia stay in this thing, benefits China, benefits Iran, on all kinds of levels. And if we just keep playing along, and every time you know, Ukraine puts their hand out, we put money in there just to kind of keep this going, it's just, it's kind of like petals just falling off a flower, right? Yeah. And then who knows what happens after that, You know, World War Three thing is interesting.

It's, there's always, I think we talked one time, there's always that one little event that happens when you look back on it, whether it's World War One, World War Two that triggered the whole thing and it didn't seem like a big deal in the beginning. Revolutionary War was like that as well. And it's like, oh, that's what sparked

that whole big thing. It doesn't seem like it, right? It's not some big, massive event. It's it's the small one that sparks it. And then these little things that trickle after the next thing, you know, it's World War II or whatever the case is. And, you know, this could be that spark for something else down the line. I hope not, right? And I hope the people that are paid to look at things like this, I hope they're looking and I hope they're trying to find something to put those sparks out rather than fanning the flame. You know, you're frustrated. You're frustrated with some of the things that are going on

in Ukraine yet you still continue to go there and help the people. Is there anything that could happen that would keep you or Overwatch Foundation from going back and helping those people? And Ukraine? No. Nothing.

Nothing. No, I mean, I mean, sure of Ukraine turning on the United States or something like that. Can you crane? No. Nothing. Nothing. No. I mean, short of Ukraine turning on the United States or something like that, no. Which obviously is probably not going to happen, right? No, because again, we're not there for Ukraine. I literally do not care about Ukraine. I don't care about Russia. I don't care about Ukraine.

I care about those people. You know, those people need help. And, you know, the romantic side of me sees those men signing up to do that job and not being helped, not being enabled to do that job, not being trained. And, you know, if I go to the hurricane and I hand somebody a couple meals in a bottle of water, I'm helping that person, yes, for a meal, right? But I'm helping that person. If I can teach that person how to go do their little tour

of duty in the war and come back alive, then that gets that guy back to his family, that gets that guy, you know, allows him to have his future, wherever that is, whether it's in Ukraine or somewhere else, it's those little things that's why we're there. You know, I want those people, I couldn't imagine having invaders in my country.

I couldn't imagine it, right? And I know what I would do if it happened. And they're in that position now, and they're trying to do what you would do, what I would do. But no one's even giving them, telling them which door to go through. No one's giving them anything. And you know, the more we've been there, the more we've seen that that's kind of their issue is they just don't know how to play this game They did and I'm talking about war fighting like they just they don't know how to do it They're relying on old tactics probably from older Generations of people before them and you know, thank God Russia's kind of the same

Because if they were fighting against a more modern army, it would be disastrous, you know, It would probably be over. Oh, it'd be over very quickly. You know, I mean look we fought we have fought in wars against people who had old school conventional armies and it was over in a flash You know, and it wasn't until if you think of Iraq and Afghanistan especially in Iraq where the insurgency popped up and started using very creative, very modern tactics that they even were able to stand in there and have a chance and actually do somewhat well in different

situations against us, right? Because they adapted and look if these Middle Eastern insurgents from all kinds of countries can see what they need to do against us with our technology and our might and figure out things that they can do to change to have some positive effects on their hands against us. I don't understand why Ukraine can't do it. I mean, if Ukraine right now asked, I mean, I don't even care what you do. You could take active UE Green Barat teams, like RMSF teams, put them in Germany and send tons of Ukrainian guys there to learn how to You know do small unit tactics and how to war fight you could have

Caught you they could they could take that $60 billion and they could pay American contracting companies Full of guys with a ton of G-Wa experience that are no longer active So you're not messing with that kind of geopolitical stuff and You could have those guys setting up little training camps and training Ukrainians all over the country, right? you know Something though has to happen. I don't think sitting down with the Ukrainians Someone telling them what to do and them taking their existing infrastructure and their existing people what to do and them taking their existing infrastructure and their existing people

split from top down and saying okay yeah we're gonna change them we're gonna do it I don't think they can I don't think they will I don't think you know here he always says like I don't think it's in their mentality they're not gonna listen to someone tell them that and all and they don't know how to do it either right they need someone from the outside teaching them how to do this yeah and and again it's not about me it's not about me, it's not about Overwatch. That's kind of wasn't even our mission. It's not supposed to be our mission. We're just doing it because the guys were using can train those men to do that job.

And we're trying to plug that hole the best we can. I think if Ukraine or someone else wanted to look at what we've done as a like microcosm, like a tiny little sliver of what could be done in that country with training, they could do that and they could see the successes that we've had. I mean, we're a bunch of idiots over there showing guys how to, you know, do L-shape and V-shape ambushes and how to counter you know, do L-shape and V-shape the ambushes and how to counter ambush and just do basic infantry tactics and help these guys be able to patrol and that's kind of stuff, but it's working, you know, how to clear a room. It's working, these guys are

using it in real life and it's affecting, you know, forget it's not really affecting the big picture of the war, of course, but it's affecting their ability to be able to do that job. And I think if Ukraine did that on a larger scale and used some of the influence of the West that they clearly have, I mean, the West seems to love that country. I know people who have nothing to do with Ukraine that are driving around with Ukrainian flags on their cars and they're lawn and you've probably seen it here as well, right? They have our support They need to realize though that support means more than money and it means more than sending boxes of clothes for civilians that have lost everything like You want all this to stop? There's a very easy way to get this to stop you You get those people out of your country. And that's

it. And they need to be, they need to have the men to be able to do that. You know, because we can't go do that for them, but we can go train them. When are you heading back over, you know, yet? We don't know. We have to, you know, everything's crazy right now. We just, at the moment I I'm sitting here. We just got done with the Ukraine trip, the fifth one, with the court guys getting them all going, and then the hurricane. So, you know, I'll get home, take my shoes off, and then we'll sit down and kind of reassess

what's gonna happen through the end of the year. I don't know if we'll get there by the end of the year. We kind of have to raise some funds and, you know, get some supplies. I mean, we can't really go there now without taking over that kind of medical gear. We just, that has to be a thing because how effective it is when we go over there and do that kind of combat medical training. And then we implement some of the Tactics stuff and then the humanitarian stuff we're doing there. We could go do that anytime But again our missions in Ukraine now are so expansive. We're doing the humanitarian thing there with civilians

doing all the medical training with you know these units and the tactical training to go over and only do one of those it almost Is a disservice. So we have, it's just getting becoming bigger and bigger. We still need more guys, you know, we have a good roster now, since I was last on here, many guys reached out to me, and we're building that roster, you know. Are you still looking for special operations only? Yeah, yeah. We

will have some stuff in the future where we could use some other people in certain support roles, but right now we need kind of that different level of guys and we have a bunch, we have a bunch from the from the reconnaissance community obviously, some from the army, And we kind of just got access. I'm very excited about it to the a large amount of sarks from that medical community. Which I'm excited about. It's about 30 guys that we are gonna start kind of

kicking the tires on and looking at and that will help a lot because those guys, you know, special amphibious reconnaissance corpsmen are they do everything a recombinant does with kind of the 18 delta medical package as well. So they're, you know, their studs. So have an access to those level of guys is is really good. You know, they'll tell you they're not as good kind of tactically because the medical thing is more their thing, but those guys are red hot and we're happy to have, you know, those kind of guys as well, but we need more guys for sure. Well, everything will be linked below your Instagram, your website, wherever everybody can donate. Yeah, thank you. Put your resume in, fill out your contact form.

Once again, taking you crane out of it, what are some things on the horizon that you see over watch foundation getting involved in? Yeah, more than natural disaster stuff, we need to build that out a little more. Obviously, where we're based right now and Chicago is kind of fought, when we have a lot of tornadoes, which we can respond to in a flash, obviously, anywhere in the Midwest like that. But coming down or going down to like, you know, the Southeast, going into Texas, all that kind of stuff, the logistics of that get difficult just having to drive equipment down there.

Right? So coming up with some of the logistical stuff there to build out what we do on a natural disaster thing to just be that like faster and more efficient and that kind of stuff, we anticipate in the future getting to the point where we have some regional locations with guys in those regions that can mobilize faster and if we kind of have a head shed type unit that can make it down there or secondary type unit to backfill later then that's okay to take that time because we have units that can respond even faster than we can coming from Chicago. So we're in the early stages of kind of just talking about that and

sketching that out. That's good there's going to need kind of just talking about that and sketching that out. That's good. There's going to need to be obviously funding for that kind of stuff as well. But we're, you know, we'll make the plan before we, before we need the money kind of thing to make sure that we can be fast and execute there. We want to get involved in other places as well, where there are crisis type areas like Africa, South America, we sent a guy to go do kind of, to scout out Southeast Asia, specifically Vietnam, just to see if there's, to take a look and see how we can get involved there,

and there's some beginnings of some stuff there that we might look at doing. What are you looking to get involved in, of Vietnam? There's a lot of, I don't wanna say too much, but we'll say there's a medical component to it. Yeah, I don't wanna say too much, because it's still very early stages and where,

is there something going on there that no nothing to like a lot like any side trafficking. So there's a lot I like the track the trafficking thing is what we're interested in getting involved in as well obviously from a humanitarian level it's it's disastrous and I kind of have been looking into that a lot the trafficking and I knew it was happening I knew it was happening a lot, but when you look into it, you just want to stop looking into it like It's horrendous and it's very prevalent and it's everywhere, you know, and I have I have small children I have a young daughter and it's like, you know

They're it's happening to the point where it's like, if you can get 120 grand for a child age, four through eight or whatever, people then are just like, hmm, if I go out and get five of those, that's a pretty good year, you know, and they don't care, right? It's just, and everything in between that you can put on it.

So we've talked to some state and federal law enforcement about what they're doing to combat human trafficking and if there's any support needed there and all that kind of stuff and I was blown away to learn I sat down, I'm not going to mention who I'll talk to you after but the response was basically like we just don't have the bandwidth to hit that as hard as we need to. On the police level, it's unions and people working overtime and not having enough staffing as it is.

And on the federal level, it's just kind of bandwidth with everything else they have going on that, yeah, they're trying, but they don't have, they don't have the ability to spend the time doing their surveillance and building the target packages to put a case together, right? Because there's no point in them, like, the way it seems to work with them, I've never been in law enforcement, but the way it seems to work is like, They build the case to the point where they think they can get Convictions and prosecutions done then they go hit and break that thing up, right? Which makes sense. There's no point in going and actually you know doing a hit on some child trafficking ring

Then you bring a man and you can't charge them with anything or charges drop or whatever, right? But they struggle with the resources needed and the time that's needed to actually build out what we would kind of essentially say, like a target package to actually get convictions off of that. So there are some other NGOs out there that help do some stuff with child trafficking,

and we are looking at ways that maybe we can help build those target packages for them, because we have guys that can do that, and that will do that. And it almost being like it just comes in as a super tip. We obviously can't go kick the door down, right? But if we can do the leg work and then that leg work gets looked at and they can take what we've done and they can actually use it, you know, then if that helps out, then that helps out. And we're so we're in the beginning of looking at stuff like that because that's something that's just so unbelievable

and so it's just so crazy that it's so prevalent in this country. Yeah. I've been looking to dive into that as well. And no one's really talking about it. Yeah. It's hard to find the right fit. A lot of people doing a lot of things with non-profits and the sex trafficking, human trafficking ring, a lot of its bullshed.

It's hard to find the good ones. I mean, there's a lot of good stuff like, for instance, after the fact where, you know, 10 women get taken from a sex trafficking ring and there's a nonprofit that helps get them back on their feet and teach them a skill or gives them counseling and all this kind of stuff. And, you know, those are fantastic, right? But that's all after the fact.

That's after they've been trafficked, after they've been abused, after their life's been ruined, I'd like to get more involved in like, making sure that that situation is not even needed. Get your hand dirty. Yeah, that's not even needed. You know?

I found that a lot of the nonprofits in that arena, their mission statement actually is to just bring exposure to what's happening. And they're not actually involved in anything. And anyways, I've been looking for a good fit exposure to what's happening and they're not actually involved in anything and and Anyways, I've been looking for a good fit of non-profit that's actually fucking combating sex trafficking not just telling us Yeah, the shit's happening. Yeah, no shit. It's happening. Both fucking do something about it. Yeah, we're trying to actually You know get there and stop it and be a part of the solution and part of the reason

why it doesn't happen, right? I mean, if there's enough deterrent out there to, like, if I do this, someone's going to catch me, that does help. That is a deterrent, right? So, you know, and we have the guys that can do that. I mean, you know, I know guys that will send one to our house for five days kind of deal. So without blinking an eye, and they're high level professionals.

So with training to be able to do that and build those kind of target packages. So if we have those guys, that's what we're looking to do. So between some of the other humanitarian stuff and the other countries, obviously in Africa that happens a lot too, and the slave stuff over in Africa is big as well.

Just looking at the stuff where I'm getting to the point as I look into this, I really have a thing for people who are being victimized. Like just absolutely victimized to where it's out of their control. The hopelessness that comes out of that in these people, right? And let's say you're 33 years old

and something like that's happened into you and you have the rest of your life to live. You're probably gonna purposely shorten your life after some of this stuff that's going on out there and it's like that's crazy. And if me and my teams can affect that and change some of that, then that's what we're looking to do.

So the stuff in the other countries, and then as well as our country. And I never really thought about doing anything in other countries until I've seen what we can do in Ukraine, and then those guys can bounce straight from Ukraine to come to Florida, and not even go home and have and you know have a glass of whiskey in between it just goes to shore like we can be anywhere very very quickly with the guys that we have

and they're more than willing to go you know just and I told you the story about him last night he recon guy just savage the nicest savage guy you'll ever meet in your life he's incredible a week on guy just savage the nicest savage guy you'll ever meet in your life. He's incredible. And last week I wanted to bring him to the hurricane. I needed to bring him to the hurricane. And he was at home 104 degree fever, lives in Phoenix. He's like, just send me a red eye ticket. I'll be there. And I was like, all right, just calm down, dude. Relax, man, right? And you know, he recovered and he came on this trip and and he's just he's an incredible guy and our teams are full of guys like that that are just you know they're not glory hunting they're not

warm-mongering you know they're they're just getting to share time doing a good thing with good people and that's something that I never expected out with this whole Overwatch project that we've kind of stumbled upon. And I've started to grow, you know, we're giving it sunlight and water and it's growing, is what the veterans are getting out of it. You know, I never noticed that.

And like Rob went over to Ukraine on the last trip, another recon guy and he was training the court guys, and he was working with him, and I check in with him every day. At the beginning, he's like, look, I've kind of been out for a while. I don't know if I'm gonna be a lot of the guys from our kind of backgrounds are very humble

about their ability, and he's no different. And it's like, Rob, you're gonna be fine, you're gonna you're gonna kill it you're gonna do fantastic so I'm checking in with him making sure he's alright you know all this kind of stuff and he just said he's like I would do this every day I'm getting so I'm getting so much out of this and you know and you just see the lift that give those guys to be doing something that's directly affecting someone else's life or affecting a bigger picture and to be doing it with guys like them. You know, that they used to be a something and then we all get out for whatever reasons, we all get away from that past life for whatever reason and to kind of give them that feeling again.

You know, I see that in the guys and that's something I never expected to get out of this. You know, it's awesome. And it's really, really cool because it's like, it's twofold then. Like, I know if I take a guy for the first time to go do something, a hurricane or whatever, he's going to get so much out of it more than he knows. Yeah. You know, and so on the ride down or the ride in on the plane or whatever, he's gonna get so much out of it more than he knows. Yeah. And so on the right down or the right end on the plane or whatever, it's like, you know, you don't even know what's gonna happen

when you come over here and start doing this job or that job. How much is gonna benefit you? And then, but that creates a problem for me too. Like Tommy was a massive problem. He came on the first one, you know, our medic. And he came back and it's like, man, I need to find something else for this guy to do because now he's like, you know, now he's drooling.

He's salivating all over. He wants to go do more. He wants to go help. He wants to go do this. And, you know, these guys, they're getting purpose out of it. Yes. And they can see that they can really do something.

You know, like, you get out and you go work. You get out with the military. You're doing these, you get out and you go work, you get out with the military, you're doing these kind of jobs, and you go work for a company. And okay, you get a nice paycheck or whatever, and you're doing your job, and you're accomplishing some stuff, but it's not the same.

You get them doing something like this again, and it goes right back to the same feelings that we got from doing our job, and they just, the lift. And it's really crazy. It's almost like, if someone asked me, like, what does Overwatch do? Yes, we talk about our humanitarian relief

and all the things we're doing. But I, like, I and our group also affects veterans. You know? Now, it's kind of weird to say that because I never even thought that that would be a thing until I saw it in the guys. Yeah. And and that is what we do. Like that, that's part of what we do. It's it's kind of too full then.

And and I know there are guys out there that, you know, could really benefit from help help from being a part of Overwatch Yeah, and that's why I want more guys on the roster so we obviously so we can send out more teams to do more work But it's also to reach those guys that might just need it. Yeah well again What you're doing is fucking awesome, man, and And I'm sure there's gonna be a ton more resumes showing up, hopefully more funding to get these guys with the resumes to where they need to go.

And I wanna end this with something. And I'm gonna forget some names here, but, you know, on this show, we dive into a lot of corruption. We dive into cartel stuff, we dive into Ukraine, we dive into all, you know, what veterans are facing when they come home and how fucking ugly that actually looks. And at least half the emails that we get are, especially when it comes to things like Ukraine, cartels, the fentanyl crisis, China, all this kind of stuff is, well, what the fuck can we do about it? What can I do about it? You know? And I'm not used to coming from where we've come from. I'm not used to that mentality.

What am I going to, what am I, what can I do about it? And so what I want to say is, you know, and I'm just going to talk about recent guests who are making, who is one person, started with one person, grew into a big idea and it's making major fucking impacts and you, with Overwatch Foundation. You're making major impacts in Ukraine, you're making major impacts where these natural

disasters are happening, it's going to continue to happen. Scott Mann, the guy that put together task force, Pineapple Express pulling all these interpreters in our Afghan allies that unfortunately we fucking abandoned, you know, look at the impact that that guy made. That was a recent interview, machine gun preacher. You know, he's out impact that that guy made. That was a recent interview, machine gun preacher. You know, he's out there saving countless numbers of lives in Africa. Started with an idea, one person, you know, and so what I'm getting at is it doesn't take an RV

to make a fucking impact in this world. It just takes one person with some dedication and an idea and you're fucking doing that and I'm just really proud to know you and what you're doing is amazing. No, thank you. Thank you for everything. I know you and I check in all the time with each other on everything, you know, and I appreciate that for sure and that helps me a lot and I tell you every time like thank you for everything you've done and you are doing for for me and for for Overwatch it's been incredible into all the all the viewers and everybody that listens I mean you guys you don't even know how

incredible you are you know everything from people sending tons of gear, boxes of gear to those people that sent one magazine pouch or one plate carrier. Like that made a huge difference. Like a soldier fighting in the war is using that right. If you sent stuff to us, and I'm telling you this right now, if you sent stuff to us, it's in Ukraine. It's there. All that medical stuff you guys sent, all the tactical gear that you sent, some of it still had the frickin' tags on it. You know, it's all in Ukraine being used in the war. We got it there, and I couldn't believe it. We don't have a facility right now.

We kind of use my Giu-Jitsu Academy, and it was ridiculous. We had so much stuff piled up in there, you know, be waiting to go over and get shipped over. It's just when I looked at it, I was like, I can't believe this. And people would ask, like, who is that from, from everybody, you know, so these people, all of you guys really, really help. Mark, pleasure knowing you, man. You too much, thank you. I'm sure you'll leave back. I know you'll be back. So I loved it. Yeah. You know this gummy bear is not gonna last forever. I'll only come back for the gummy bear. It's like come back and sit and talk to me for

a couple hours. I'll give you some gummy bear. Alright man. Well best of it to our chest. Thank you. compelling interviews that you will not see anywhere else. I've also made a playlist of all the previous SRS episodes so they're easy to find. You can find that right here. Finding suitable mental health medications can be a challenge. The gene site test may help. Did you know the genetics can play an important role in gaining insight on how a person may respond to various medications. Understanding this may help reduce medication trial and error. GeneSite is a genetic test that analyzes variations in DNA. It shows how genes may affect someone's metabolism or response to medications commonly prescribed to treat depression, anxiety, and other mental health conditions.

Visit genesite.com for more information. The Bullwork Podcast focuses on political analysis and reporting without partisan loyalties. Real sense of déjà vu 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.

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