#40 Mark Turner - The Russia Ukraine War

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

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:24Shawn Ryan?

  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 four 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.

• 2:10Shawn Ryan?

  With that being said, gummy bears?

• 2:14Shawn Ryan?

  If you're on the email newsletter, they're coming back real soon. Probably around Black Friday, but the only way you're gonna find out is by signing up for the newsletter. Anyways, love you guys. I hope you enjoy the show. Happy November. Cheers.

• 2:32Shawn Ryan?

  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.

• 2:53Shawn Ryan?

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• 3:36Shawn Ryan?

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• 5:20Shawn Ryan?

  Mark, welcome back, man.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  I'm back. Thanks for having me back, Sean.

• 5:25Shawn Ryan?

  Number two.

• 5:26Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 5:26Shawn Ryan?

  I know why you're here. You just came back for the gummy bears, didn't you?

• 5:29Speaker 01

  Just, that's it. You can't buy these things, right? I don't know what the deal is. You can't get them 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.

• 5:41Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, they're releasing a Black Friday.

• 5:45Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah?

• 5:46Shawn Ryan?

  Black Friday, there's gonna be a big release.

• 5:47Speaker 01

  Nice. Can we do like a thing where I get first crack at them before anybody else?

• 5:51Shawn Ryan?

  Absolutely. I got, I know a guy.

• 5:54Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 5:54Shawn Ryan?

  You gotta be signed up for the newsletter to get notified.

• 5:57Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 5:58Shawn Ryan?

  Cause that's all we're gonna, we're not gonna post.

• 6:00Speaker 01

  I'll get signed up then.

• 6:01Shawn Ryan?

  But, um, but dude, super excited to have you back. First time you were here, Overwatch Foundation, I think was kinda more of an idea than

• 6:12Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 6:13Shawn Ryan?

  than a reality.

• 6:14Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 6:15Shawn Ryan?

  Came on, got a bunch of funding, you've been to Ukraine how many times?

• 6:20Speaker 01

  Five times now.

• 6:21Shawn Ryan?

  And how many, it's only been like six months ago.

• 6:23Speaker 01

  Since February, yeah.

• 6:26Shawn Ryan?

  Five times?

• 6:27Speaker 01

  Five times.

• 6:28Shawn Ryan?

  Five times since February, and you've been down to Florida for the hurricane relief?

• 6:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:35Shawn Ryan?

  Once?

• 6:35Speaker 01

  Twice.

• 6:36Shawn Ryan?

  Twice already?

• 6:37Speaker 01

  I actually came straight here from the hurricane. I arrived yesterday and, you know, God help the people that had to sit next to us on the plane. My feet still smelled like nasty hurricane water and all that kinda stuff. So, um, was able to get here and get changed and take a shower for you and all that kinda stuff. So, uh, yeah, we just came straight here. I didn't go home.

• 6:59Shawn Ryan?

  That's amazing, man. You know, I just...

• 7:03Shawn Ryan?

  Little background on you for the audience. Came on, I can't remember what episode, but it was back in February.

• 7:08Speaker 01

  March it was.

• 7:09Shawn Ryan?

  It was, was it March?

• 7:11Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 7:11Shawn Ryan?

  Uh, Ukraine had just, just kicked off. You were already over there training these guys, training local farmers, all the way up to Ukrainian special ops, correct?

• 7:22Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 7:22Shawn Ryan?

  And, um, you made such an impact over there that there's a, there's, there's a very high demand for Overwatch Foundation in Ukraine. And I think you have teams over there. Do you have a team right now?

• 7:35Speaker 01

  No, our team actually, we just finished up, um, our fifth trip in Ukraine. And, um, two of the guys flew straight from Ukraine to the hurricane.

• 7:48Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 7:49Speaker 01

  So, I mean, that's, uh...

• 7:50Shawn Ryan?

  You guys are working your asses off.

• 7:52Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 7:53Shawn Ryan?

  It's, and it's solid work. You know, I just wanted to say, man, two, starting off, there's a couple of 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, um, and I think that, that just speaks volumes, you know? Um, on top of that, we had a great conversation at dinner last night on where you guys are at now compared to where you were.

• 8:32Shawn Ryan?

  And it still blows my mind that you're spending your own money to send all the supplies and everything that, that, um, that everybody donated. And there was a massive, um, influx of both money and gear. And so I want to, I definitely want to thank the audience for that. Um, because of you guys, Mark's and his team's gone over five times now. They're doing hurricane relief down in Fort Myers, Cape Coral, Sanibel, Captiva.

• 9:01Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:02Shawn Ryan?

  Um, and you got some...

• 9:06Shawn Ryan?

  Really eye opening footage on that and um so anyways I want to don't I if you want to donate to Overwatch Foundation the links are in the description uh 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

• 9:28Speaker 01

  Thank you it's uh and you know I I'm gonna take some time at some point during all this to 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 or there with pictures that have done so much for us all the way up to people who are actively involved and and donating and and gear or money or whatever it's just been it's been incredible so you know it's it's been it's been nuts

• 10:00Shawn Ryan?

  We have an amazing audience

• 10:01Speaker 01

  It's I can't even it's hard to get words you know to describe like how incredible it's been

• 10:09Shawn Ryan?

  It's awesome man well you don't have to because your actions are louder louder than words but here we go here we go

• 10:18Speaker 01

  Let's see

• 10:19Shawn Ryan?

  Any guesses?

• 10:20Speaker 01

  Oh I I don't have any guesses it's a different sized box than last time I hope there's gummy bears but oh nice there it is

• 10:29Shawn Ryan?

  There they are

• 10:30Speaker 01

  These you have to get these

• 10:33Shawn Ryan?

  There they are

• 10:33Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm these are going right in the freezer I already have plans right this bag will be eaten before I get home tonight these ones are going in the freezer when I get home

• 10:42Shawn Ryan?

  Legal in all 50 states

• 10:43Speaker 01

  Exactly yep

• 10:44Shawn Ryan?

  Not that that matters because you're from Illinois anyways but

• 10:48Speaker 01

  Fantastic and look I'll 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 really I don't eat a lot of candy but I like I like gummy bears right um 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

• 11:24Speaker 01

  You know, and I gave you a chance last time. And then I was, 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.

• 11:34Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 11:34Speaker 01

  If you're out there and you've been on the fence about the gummy bears, pull the trigger because they're, they're fantastic.

• 11:40Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you.

• 11:42Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Mark. So let's start diving in.

• 11:46Shawn Ryan?

  I want to cover a little bit about what you guys are doing down in Florida.

• 11:49Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 11:50Shawn Ryan?

  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 a 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 and kind of what the morale is going is is over there for for the for the people of Ukraine.

• 12:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 12:22Shawn Ryan?

  Let's start with, let's start with Florida.

• 12:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. So the hurricane came and I actually, you know. I do all of kind of the the forward field operation type stuff with Overwatch, right? We have a guy who does my my partner Brad, he does a lot of the backend. Um, 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. Um, 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.

• 13:07Speaker 01

  Now the hurricane and we we use some technology to do all that kind of stuff. Um, so this hurricane's coming. Of course, we're kind of planning on going and making the the difference that we can make. We kind of excel on the day zero to day four or five. Kind of timeframe, right, where we can get there and and make the dynamic impact that's needed. You know, helping people that are really stuck before some of the authorities get there, before some of the, you know, FEMA and Red Cross and all that takes them 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

• 13:49Speaker 01

  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, it hits the Fort Myers area and we had an advanced team that was going down ahead of of the team that I was with. They had the truck with all the gear, chainsaws, all the equipment, and they had food and water that we were going to distribute.

• 14:16Shawn Ryan?

  Hurricane happened, how how, when are you there?

• 14:20Speaker 01

  Uh, there's hurricane, we were there the day after.

• 14:23Shawn Ryan?

  You were there the day after?

• 14:24Speaker 01

  The day after, yeah. And that was the same with the hurricane in 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 and I'm I'm going to say this, and I know it's going to sound bad, and I'm 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?

• 14:53Shawn Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 14:53Speaker 01

  Um, so we go down to do the work that's not clearing trees off someone's front lawn.

• 15:01Speaker 01

  You know, and so so we punched down, we sent the team down ahead because we're in Chicago and it takes eighteen, twenty 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. We're 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 say. Um, 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 going to go to the east coast of Florida and follow the hurricane as it gained more. Speed and and kind of power heading towards Georgia, South Carolina, that kind of thing.

• 15:46Speaker 01

  That was kind of what we were thinking. But on the plane, I got a message or saw there was a message from the Recon Sniper Foundation that said there was a Marine on deployment who whose aunt was kind of missing. She was they were had contact with her. He had had contact with her, seventy four 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 comms they had was water was coming in her 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 the devastation and the magnitude

• 16:31Speaker 01

  and the power of these storms. It's, you know, I sit there and I just say, like, I can't get my head around the physics of of of a storm like that and, you know, and how that affects our houses and our cars and and what it does. And so, yeah, she has 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 wifi and it's like, OK. So I reply back, hey, I'm going to Florida. Wasn't planning on going to that area, but get me in contact with this guy and we'll sort that out, right? So the 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

• 17:12Speaker 01

  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 going to 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 Marine's aunt is OK. And 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 ten thirty or something and we drove all night to get from Atlanta, Georgia to Fort Myers and um after flying down, drove all night, the two of us.

• 17:58Speaker 01

  You know, we got there, it was like seven o'clock in the morning, beautiful Florida morning and it's like, now we're in this lady's driveway. Kind of thing, right? It's like, alright, let's go knock on the door and um yeah, she was in there, you know, a ton of distress. She was really freaked out, obviously. Um, house was underwater, right? I mean, it was, it was just crazy. She had done the best she could, trying to get everything 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. Um, 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 um, those kind of little canal areas in Florida.

• 18:42Speaker 01

  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 um, you know, seventy-four 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. Um, and we saw, obviously, Fort Myers was just decimated. That was the epicenter. Um, much the same way that La Plaz, Louisiana was in Hurricane Ida last year. And so then it was just like, okay, we need to get these guys down here.

• 19:28Speaker 01

  Because this is where we're gonna 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.

• 19:38Speaker 01

  And that was our first trip. We just kinda did all that, but the some of the scenes, you know, and and the difference between the hurricane and a small town of La Platte, 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 boats and bridges and and all this kinda, you know, you're from that area, you know how it is. It's 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.

• 20:10Speaker 01

  Even just trying to move from one side of the town to the other with the rise in floodwaters and all that becomes a bit of a nightmare. Something that was gonna take us an hour ended up taking us six hours.

• 20:21Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 20:21Speaker 01

  Just because you have to navigate and, you know, 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, you know, who the hell are you? And you just kinda 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

• 20:46Speaker 01

  and there's a reason we kinda 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 Sanibel. The bridge is all jacked 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 ten and twelve, is 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, you know, we ended up doing a lot of wellness checks. It was more like search and recovery.

• 21:30Shawn Ryan?

  Is Overwatch getting paid?

• 21:32Speaker 01

  No, no, no, we don't, we're not, we're not getting paid.

• 21:34Shawn Ryan?

  So you're saying there's just a bunch of nonprofits and companies down there that are waiting on big money to come in?

• 21:40Speaker 01

  Right. And then they want to maybe keep people like us out, you know?

• 21:44Shawn Ryan?

  They're not there for the people, they're there for the money.

• 21:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I, and I, I'm not gonna speak for them, you'd have to ask them if they're there for the money. But I mean, you know, it got to the point where there was a red tape issue. We were talking to a bunch of first responders like um, police and sheriff guys that were manning a checkpoint that wasn't allowed, or that was controlling traffic going over the bridge into Fort Myers Beach. Um, and um, they were all for sending us over there. But they didn't want to get themselves in trouble. Um, I'm trying not to get them in trouble now either. Um, they ended up giving us enough hints that I picked up on

• 22:27Speaker 01

  that we were able to use the boat we had to get onto that island.

• 22:35Shawn Ryan?

  To help people.

• 22:36Speaker 01

  To help people. And, you know, we had to go through this mangrove swamp to, to get there and we had to kind of do a bunch of stuff. It's one hell of an insert just to get onto this frickin' island. Um, but we got there and we started working, you know, I mean, and the alternative is you just say, okay, and you go try and 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, 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 you, what do you have to do? Do you have to climb over it, climb under it, smash through it? Like, it's just an obstacle.

• 23:18Speaker 01

  You know, so you just figure it out. And we obviously have the guys to, to be able to do that and, I mean, they'll do anything, right? Um, and so we were able to go on there and, and do some recovery type, search and recovery type work and clear some houses and, and make sure everything was okay. And, and then, um, you know, we went to Sanibel twice. We were kind of working with the fire department there. Um. Those guys are working so hard. They 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 and the guys that are working hard are are we could see they were this was now day ten twelve very tired.

• 24:01Speaker 01

  And it was actually Yuri who basically helped these uh firemen from probably hurting themselves on a thirty 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 they're probably gonna end in tears, you know. Um 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 no than have to think about it 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 the hurricane

• 24:46Speaker 01

  came. Um, number one, I I made a mistake was I had sent, we had sent a team and I went with the with the advance party. It was kind of, we'll talk about it, but our 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 A-team guys that went to 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

• 25:28Speaker 01

  hurricane season. We need to make that the focus 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. We they couldn't be support guys. I needed them like out in the field doing stuff. And so we were stretched kind of thin and that was totally my fault, you know. Um, it it would, we could have done so much more if we would have had different guys there. Um, so next year, you know, learned that lesson. Um, for sure there. It just and that's something we never had. It was 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.

• 26:13Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, that that alone is amazing. I just, I want to reiterate to the audience this your the Overwatch Foundation was an idea six months ago. Now you got a team in Ukraine and a team down in Florida.

• 26:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. And 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 both fronts, but it could have went a lot better in my mind, right? Like, and 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?

• 26:53Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 26:54Speaker 01

  Um, the other thing was too, I was a little bit too, um, especially on the, it goes into the fact that we need to, 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, um, because our experience, the last two trips to hurricanes, we did, we didn't, there was no rules, right? I mean, it was Wild West and we could just get involved and and and help. So I tried to play by those rules, um, this last weekend, and we ended up just throwing the road book

• 27:37Speaker 01

  out the window and doing it our way anyway, and being creative and finding ways to to get our work done. And the lesson there was I should have just done that from the beginning.

• 27:46Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  We have the guys that can do that. We had the capability with the boat and and some of the people we had down there with us. I should have just done that anyway, but I'm learning, you know?

• 27:55Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. You 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.

• 28:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:03Shawn Ryan?

  Um, and it's weird because.

• 28:07Shawn Ryan?

  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 cellphone 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. You get two weeks preparation

• 28:47Shawn Ryan?

  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, you know, 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, you know, the various places that we've deployed to across the world, we see what desperation looks like.

• 29:29Shawn Ryan?

  And nobody, 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, what, day six to 10, desperation started setting in. You started seeing people heading over to San ibel, looting the island, on boats, getting back on the boat, coming back. A lot of crime happened, a lot of desperation crimes happening at, at gas stations.

• 30:03Shawn Ryan?

  Do you guys run into any of that?

• 30:05Speaker 01

  Um, we did a lot last year in Louisiana, um, and it is, it's like society deteriorates really quickly. When you have no food, no water, no power, you know, um, no gasoline. And, you know, we're guys that are riding around with food, water and gasoline.

• 30:24Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 30:24Speaker 01

  So it's, um, we're very careful on where we go and, and how we go. Um, we obviously can protect ourselves. We put ourselves in positions where, you know, that benefit us. Um, but for, 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, um, to where people just, you know, 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, like Pine Island. I think there was a lot of crime happening, um, Sanibel as well. Um, it's just, it's very, it's very weird to see the arc of, hey, we're just so happy.

• 31:09Speaker 01

  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, somebody said, uh, said this line, I, 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?

• 31:42Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 31:43Speaker 01

  And I, I put a thing on Instagram about, um, you know, people say, well, why don't those people just prepare? Like, you know, hurricanes come in, get food, get water. And, 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?

• 32:00Shawn Ryan?

  Hold on. Your Overwatch Foundation is a disaster relief organization and you're not a prepper?

• 32:07Speaker 01

  No, I'm not a prepper at all, right? I mean.

• 32:11Speaker 01

  I because because of Overwatch, I probably have a couple of MREs here or there. I'd have to dig through like a war box and find them or something, right? Yeah. Um, you know, but I'm not a prepper and I'm I don't knock anybody that is. It's just not me. My basement is not full of like food and water and mark this and cataloging that. It's just not what I do, right? Um. But I saw people in Florida who were preppers and I saw cases of water with the tops blown off the water. And the the bottles full of sand. Oh, man. And, you know, food stores that had just been like, just basically blown up, right? Like, and now that food ruined. So it's like,

• 32:55Speaker 01

  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 bad. But, you know, these storms are incredible. And, you know, some of the pictures I sent you some of the 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, how did that boat? The the water line's five hundred meters that way. How is that boat five hundred meters this way? Behind the house? Think of what it takes to do something like that, you know? And and then when I saw that, it's like, okay, so these are people that actually did prep.

• 33:40Speaker 01

  They had all this water and now they can't drink that water. Yeah. So.

• 33:46Speaker 01

  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 gonna 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 gonna get hit, just leave because you don't know. Sure, you could ride it out. Sure, you might have ridden out four or five or you may be doing this for twenty years. But that one. Could be the one, right, that that ruins everything for you, you know?

• 34:26Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. You know, you brought up um 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. At last minute, drowned in their cars. And one thing that I found interesting um that you had mentioned is that it seemed that the, I believe you said the county uh doesn't want those numbers.

• 35:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, so we talked to a lot of locals down there um and got a lot of information about that, that they don't believe what's being put out there as far as um numbers of this, that, or 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.

• 35:34Speaker 01

  And I think what they're worried about is,

• 35:39Speaker 01

  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. Um, God forbid anything like that happens.

• 35:54Speaker 01

  They want to get that taken care of, but they want to get it taken care of with as least amount of publicity as 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?

• 36:18Speaker 01

  And so I understand they want to get that taken care of as quietly as possible and they may be thinking someone like me or another NGO or something. Will just show up and take a bunch of pictures or live stream that on Instagram or 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 all obviously was a person. But it's a real life story. Yeah. 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 polit- state politician or a

• 36:59Speaker 01

  or 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. Yeah. Right? 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 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 hundred, a hundred ju- dead just from that neighborhood.

• 37:43Speaker 01

  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 in a port of John in Iraq in July and it smelled that mixture of pee and poo smell.

• 38:19Shawn Ryan?

  It's one of my favorite smells.

• 38:20Speaker 01

  That is the smell, coupled with salt war.

• 38:23Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, man.

• 38:24Speaker 01

  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 your vehicle, you're trying to go to sleep. You go to this side of town, you go that side. The whole place smells like that. So it's not like you're gonna smell a body when you go into a house.

• 38:36Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 38:36Speaker 01

  Um, 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 kinda 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, and 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,

• 39:21Speaker 01

  there's probably more than a hundred people when this is all said and done.

• 39:24Shawn Ryan?

  That's sad.

• 39:26Speaker 01

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

• 39:37Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 39:39Speaker 01

  It's unbelievable.

• 39:41Shawn Ryan?

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

• 40:03Speaker 01

  Perfect.

• 40:09Shawn Ryan?

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• 41:24Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Mark, we're diving into Ukraine now. You've been there, I think, six times in total?

• 41:30Speaker 01

  Five times total.

• 41:32Shawn Ryan?

  Okay, so four times since the last time you've been here.

• 41:35Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 41:36Shawn Ryan?

  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, nuclear weapons that increasingly seems to be becoming a more prominent threat as time

• 42:18Shawn Ryan?

  goes on. And as we discussed on the way here, just last night, they did, they hit, they used 75 rockets in, in civilian locations in Ukraine. So, let's just start with the trip.

• 42:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, so we obviously came back here and sat with you, and the response was, was incredible. So much so that we were able to quickly plan another trip to go back for our second trip.

• 42:56Speaker 01

  That trip happened in April, so we were here in March, that happened the end of April, like, let's say the twenty-something of of April, we went and

• 43:13Speaker 01

  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 and was a GOAT Lab guy and all this in the Army and and just very high level medic.

• 43:37Speaker 01

  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 incre- and 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 and different, you know, eighteen Delta guys that we are getting in our pipeline now to to be on our teams are being funneled through him. 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.

• 44:20Speaker 01

  We were given a very large donation. At that time, we were not a five oh one C three. 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 a large donation, hundred thousand dollars from a

• 44:50Speaker 01

  From a charity that was a five oh one C three and basically raises money for hospital nonprofit type stuff. It was a Ukrainian man with Ukrainian or a man with Ukrainian heritage heard 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 gonna 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

• 45:35Speaker 01

  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 gonna do from a medical level at that time as far as like ifax and what they were gonna put out in their training and to their to 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, and you

• 46:17Speaker 01

  know, we'll get into we use these now. These are the ifax 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 then just taking care of all the logistical and for us to get those kits. So we bought a hundred thousand dollars worth of those. And How many kits is a hundred thousand dollars 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, cool. Hundreds, right? Like six hundred or something like that, right?

• 46:58Speaker 01

  And you know, we could, yeah, I I told you about this, like, we could have cheaped out and just went and got any IFAX. 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 IFAX from other companies, or we could have got certain IFAX that have kind of a bunch of stuff in there that you don't need, that you or I would probably just field strip anyway and throw half the stuff away. The thing I like about these um 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.

• 47:36Speaker 01

  Um, they're just absolutely incredible at focused research group and and you know, obviously, it was great. Uh, 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 gonna cheap out on it. We're trying to do our best in this country for these people, we're gonna take the best gear. So we had that gear, we took it over and um started. We actually raised a medical platoon, uh 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, and Tommy wasn't there on the first trip, I said, okay.

• 48:21Speaker 01

  Let's get a look and see, see how far they've fallen, right? Like, we haven't been here in, 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, it's like, okay, let's see. Some weapons handling and they really impressed me. It was clear that they had been training 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 ten guys, maybe twelve guys, something like that.

• 49:07Speaker 01

  Nice. And it was basically like.

• 49:10Speaker 01

  The way you kind of do it in the military. Who's interested in medical shit? Little hands start kind of, kind of going up, you know, okay, boom, let's go. And um, cause our thought process was we don't want to just pluck people. Because you know, it's like you get plucked to do something you don't want to do. And these guys are going to combat. 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 medic, right? So um. He would take them and start training them and get them using the focus kits and, and. And teaching them all kinds of medical stuff. And he was sticking the nasopharyngeal up their nose and they were doing decompression stuff. Um, I mean, you know, his extent of knowledge and what we pushed on those guys.

• 49:54Speaker 01

  Was really good. And then I started working more advanced tactics with the guys, uh ambush, counter ambush type stuff. Um, and they were doing really well. I think I showed you some of those videos way back then too.

• 50:07Shawn Ryan?

  You did.

• 50:08Speaker 01

  They really were, you know, if it's like anything else in the beginning, they kind of struggle with it. And then it's my job to obviously funnel that training in to, to see where they're slipping and fit plug those holes and. And give them the path to, to be successful with this stuff because they're going to use it, right? And then we would incorporate the medics into the tactics.

• 50:31Speaker 01

  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, and so we worked through all that and, 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?

• 50:54Shawn Ryan?

  How many guys? Overall, including the medical team and.

• 50:59Speaker 01

  That was, I think about.

• 51:02Speaker 01

  About forty guys.

• 51:03Shawn Ryan?

  Had they gone out and come back?

• 51:06Speaker 01

  They had just been training.

• 51:07Shawn Ryan?

  They had just been training?

• 51:08Speaker 01

  They had been doing their security patrols and all that kind of stuff, but they hadn't been to the front.

• 51:12Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 51:14Speaker 01

  So we did that that trip there.

• 51:19Speaker 01

  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, um, 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've 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, who the hell are these guys? Well, one of the guys had thirty two years experience in uh, the Ukrainian alphas, which is,

• 52:00Speaker 01

  you know, their version of special operations equivalent to SEALs and all like Green Berets, this kind of stuff. So then there's me standing there, right? And I'm like, all right, well, this dude. Is, 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, I'm not here for vacation. Like I'm running this thing. I don't care who you are, like I'm running it or I'll just go home, right? You don't need me, I'll go home, I'm not getting paid to be here. 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.

• 52:43Speaker 01

  So we get to work and we're talking to Tommy, it's like, we can't mess this up, man, like we have to put this down. They had some other guys there, high level intelligence guys from Ukraine. Um, 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 and two man kind of like little bundles, very tight. And so much so, when they got behind cover and were laying in the prone, they did this weird thing, they interlocked their legs or whatever and, I mean, I had never seen anything like that before. It's like, okay, I have a question.

• 53:28Speaker 01

  How do you get up like me and you laying in the prone with our legs interlocked? Shooting it opposite ends of a piece of cover.

• 53:36Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 53:36Speaker 01

  Stand up, right? Like, how's that gonna happen? Or if I wanna stand up and you don't, we're like, it's weird, right? 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.

• 53:49Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 53:50Speaker 01

  You know, like, we need to update this a little bit. This is not like nineteen seventy eight where you're fighting somebody somewhere. Like, we're not doing this anymore. And um, so we showed them, we had them run us through a couple of courses of fire that they were doing. We saw it.

• 54:08Speaker 01

  And then we showed them, and right away you could see, especially the the guy from Alpha was like, okay, yeah, this is good. The same way on the first trip, the Colonel kind of saw what we were doing. The Army Colonel saw what we were doing, was like, yeah, this is what I want. And the Colonel 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. It either 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.

• 54:47Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 54:48Speaker 01

  And so then when it comes to like, well, now.

• 54:51Shawn Ryan?

  You, you in the Overwatch Foundation is essentially rewriting the Special Operations Handbook for Ukraine. When it comes to CQB tactics and ambush tactics.

• 55:03Speaker 01

  Ambush and CQB stuff, yeah.

• 55:06Shawn Ryan?

  It's weird to say that, right? Is it weird to think that?

• 55:09Speaker 01

  Weird to do it. And and that's that wasn't the plan. I mean, of course, we wanted to help those guys. And we'll talk about it a little bit as well, cuz I have this weird feeling of, essentially what me and my organization is doing, it sounds 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.

• 55:34Speaker 01

  Like, it sounds stupid, I, 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. Or you're like, how could 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.

• 56:00Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 56:01Speaker 01

  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 don't have, they haven't had a basic training. They haven't went to infantry school.

• 56:14Shawn Ryan?

  Well, we are talking about everything from

• 56:18Shawn Ryan?

  the baker, the butcher, the carpenter, to the alpha guys.

• 56:23Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 56:23Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 56:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, you know, and you can see the alpha guy, Andrew's like, yeah, this is good to go. This is what these guys need. And

• 56:33Shawn Ryan?

  But they need it too.

• 56:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so this leads us into where we go, you know, towards the more present past.

• 56:44Speaker 01

  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 implementing that was good. I mean, Zach and I, we could patch you up, you know, like if you get shot, I can stuff gauze into you. I can throw a tourniquet on you. 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 in 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.

• 57:25Speaker 01

  And being able to, you know, run at that level with those guys and have them plug into us, because now, now it's not like we're the dudes that just show up. A lot of the guys, they, we know those guys now, because we were there on the first trip. And so they're, they're on the edge of their seat, wanting to put out and wanting to learn. And so we did that. That trip was, I think, I'm kind of spotty on the days it runs together. Sixteen, seventeen days, let's say.

• 57:56Speaker 01

  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

• 58:09Speaker 01

  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're able to get that equipment out to them and get them trained up just kind of via 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.

• 58:52Shawn Ryan?

  What kind of feedback are you getting from the front lines?

• 58:55Speaker 01

  As far as

• 58:57Shawn Ryan?

  The focus kits?

• 58:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, so our guys

• 59:00Shawn Ryan?

  Are they using them?

• 59:01Speaker 01

  After that first trip, or sorry, the second trip, this one where we took the focus kits, those guys did so well, they 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.

• 59:32Speaker 01

  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 and the gear, saving life and limb for those guys on the front.

• 59:50Shawn Ryan?

  That's amazing.

• 59:51Speaker 01

  And, you know, I remember we got a text message about that, like a guy we know and he had

• 1:00:02Speaker 01

  You know, he needed a tourniquet to basically survive and you know, he got shot and he did the, you know, that's silly little ifak and the training saved that dude's life. And I remember I was sitting, it was a Monday morning, I was sitting in my kitchen eating oatmeal and that text message comes in.

• 1:00:22Speaker 01

  And the first thing you think about, it's like, alright, 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 get on the phone to call. I need to, I need to get a team put together. We need to go do this again, right? Cause without that, you know, those guys don't have anything. They don't have ifaks. They're out there, they run and gun 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, like I didn't expect that to happen a few months later, a couple of months later.

• 1:01:07Speaker 01

  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 like 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, and look, I'm no, you know, dev group CQB type guy. I have a ton of experience with CQB, obviously, and, and, and, and my job,

• 1:01:52Speaker 01

  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 use a very basic stuff, weapons handling for CQB, um, room entry, you know, one, two, three, four man, really focused on that first and second man type stuff. Um, just kind of talk to them how to actually clear a 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, your 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.

• 1:02:38Speaker 01

  Can we put some of this up right now? Yeah, we can put, we can put it up. Um, you know, and, and, 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 and the guys were, um, really working hard to pick up some of that technique and those principles. And again, you get that text message.

• 1:03:21Speaker 01

  I think I sent it to you from a guy who said, hey, thank you very much for those classes 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

• 1:03:40Speaker 01

  this is ridiculous. And, and it makes me so happy. It makes me so emotional to be able to help somebody like that. Yeah. It's not helping the Ukrainian army. It's helping that guy. That guy, right? Who?

• 1:03:54Speaker 01

  Volunteer, he's not a military guy. He volunteered to go fight because of what happened in his country. You know, this is not us on a contract, training a foreign group, or even training whatever, a county SWAT team or anything for a ridiculously expensive contract. That's not what we're doing. Like, 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 um to the level that they have um, you know,

• 1:04:32Speaker 01

  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 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 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?

• 1:05:16Speaker 01

  And it's it's practical. They're gonna use that stuff. They're at 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 to use a tourniquet. Or I saved, you know, we saved this guy's life because you handed us a focus kit and Tommy showed us how to use it in detail. And even like, you guys raised a medical platoon. We kind of just came in and told their their Colonel, the the head guy of their whole unit, like, you know, hey, sir, we want to raise a medical platoon. He just kinda was like, alright, you know, he trusts us, obviously, after everything we've done and

• 1:05:58Speaker 01

  here's Tommy, here's who he is, we're gonna have him, we're gonna create a medical platoon for you guys, full of medics. And, uh, 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 saved those guys' lives when they have to go and, 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.

• 1:06:44Speaker 01

  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, um, we obviously need donations to stay afloat, we're a 501(c)(3). But it's not about that, and it's not about Ukraine, it's about those men.

• 1:06:59Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. How, how much combat are these guys seeing?

• 1:07:05Speaker 01

  I don't know exactly, enough, right? I mean, they're out on the front lines and, and that's kinda some of the problem too, is as we've been there longer and we're doing these trips and we're learning more about kinda how this whole war is going on, is, um,

• 1:07:25Speaker 01

  how the war's being fought, I highly disagree with.

• 1:07:28Shawn Ryan?

  What do you disagree with?

• 1:07:30Speaker 01

  Well,

• 1:07:34Speaker 01

  it's very complex.

• 1:07:35Shawn Ryan?

  Well, let's, let's backtrack, we'll get into that kinda stuff, we'll get into opinions and media, what's real, what's not, in a little bit. Right now, let's keep, 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?

• 1:08:12Speaker 01

  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, um, 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 ITAR type stuff and all this, it's just a nightmare, right? I never thought, Sean, it would be so difficult trying to fricking help people in the world. It really, they make it really difficult trying to help somebody. Um, you know, it's kind of like if you fell down and, 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?

• 1:08:52Speaker 01

  So we're trying to do all this, well, we took a bunch of stuff and it got lost. Like of the hundred thousand dollars we took over.

• 1:09:03Shawn Ryan?

  Worth the gear?

• 1:09:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, the gear, probably eighty grands worth of it got lost initially.

• 1:09:09Shawn Ryan?

  Oh my God.

• 1:09:10Speaker 01

  So it was ridiculous. We got most of it back, um, 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 our day with Iraq and 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?

• 1:09:39Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:40Speaker 01

  Um, 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, couple of things here or there missing, but okay, the majority of it's there. Well, one bag had about twenty grands worth of gear in it and it was missing. And we were working every day trying to find it, trying to locate it and all this kind of stuff.

• 1:10:06Speaker 01

  Turns out, we just kinda thought, now we're never gonna see or hear 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 try and 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 kinda medical stuff and and making some contacts with people.

• 1:10:47Speaker 01

  That led us into kinda the the the the fourth and and fifth trip, so. After that.

• 1:10:58Speaker 01

  We started working heavily with the special operations guys. There Tommy and this other guy, another medic and eighteen Delta guy. Went over and this for the fourth trip and they started working with.

• 1:11:16Speaker 01

  The special operations guys, they're called cord, they're basically the. They're like a hostage rescue team, kinda like a HRT team, like for the FBI kinda thing. Now they're obviously doing military operations. But that's kinda what they they do, they're a very kinda 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.

• 1:11:59Shawn Ryan?

  What what kinda stuff are, what kinda stuff is a HRT team, a hostage rescue team? What are they being tasked with in in this war because this conflict is? It's we're gonna take your country.

• 1:12:12Speaker 01

  This is part of the problem is, you know. It's kinda 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.

• 1:12:21Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:22Speaker 01

  Like just cuz you're good at basketball, doesn't mean you're gonna be good at volleyball. Right, but they're a legit basketball team and they're very good. So let's just plug them in over here, right? It's it's not like that. Things are very, very, you know, a- and 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 rescue thing, 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.

• 1:13:02Speaker 01

  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?

• 1:13:11Speaker 01

  They're just plugging them in. They're plugging this these cord units into the war.

• 1:13:17Shawn Ryan?

  So they're

• 1:13:20Shawn Ryan?

  take all their

• 1:13:22Shawn Ryan?

  whatever exp- hostage rescue experience and throw it out the window because that's not what they're doing.

• 1:13:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I I don't.

• 1:13:29Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, it seems like

• 1:13:32Shawn Ryan?

  wh- what are they doing though? Are they? Because it seems like everybody should be in some type of a defensive role. Actually, it seems like it should be going offensive at this point.

• 1:13:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that's that's we'll we'll talk about that. But the um, 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 lob artillery at each other, which is ridiculous.

• 1:14:04Speaker 01

  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 it's somewhat more familiar to 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.

• 1:14:42Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I understand.

• 1:14:44Speaker 01

  They're just trying to get them involved because they have training, they can shoot, move, communicate a little bit, and they need bodies.

• 1:14:51Shawn Ryan?

  Are any of the Ukrainian forces advancing?

• 1:14:55Speaker 01

  Uh, 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.

• 1:15:36Shawn Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:15:36Speaker 01

  Right? Do you agree?

• 1:15:37Shawn Ryan?

  I a hundred percent agree.

• 1:15:39Speaker 01

  That's not what's happening in Ukraine right now.

• 1:15:42Shawn Ryan?

  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.

• 1:15:54Shawn Ryan?

  You were extremely frustrated uh with what was going on and 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, you know, the Russians, you know, basically look like a massacre.

• 1:16:13Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:16:14Shawn Ryan?

  And um, 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 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.

• 1:16:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's

• 1:16:41Shawn Ryan?

  After it had already been abandoned, basically there was no danger.

• 1:16:44Speaker 01

  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 and he was in a town where there was fighting and they fought for that town. Yeah, okay, sure, of course, I hope so.

• 1:17:00Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:00Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:17:07Shawn Ryan?

  That's the exception.

• 1:17:08Speaker 01

  Yes, and what's happening is Russia's obviously very

• 1:17:14Speaker 01

  Bad at this. All the stuff that we've been brought up to learn about Russia and their fearsome military and their, you know, advanced whatever, it kinda has all been smoke and mirrors for the last fifty, sixty years, it seems, because they're pretty terrible at warfighting. Ukraine is 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, war, you know, bullets, Band-Aids, communication, like even where to go next. Like, you just kinda left us here, we're here in this town, we've massacred it, we've done whatever we've done here.

• 1:18:00Speaker 01

  Now what kinda 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 to taxing, they pull them back in towards that eastern line that Russia's been well established on since two thousand fourteen. And so, this big offensive that was in the media, this Ukrainian offensive, um, you know, again, if you want to compare it to Fallujah, Fallujah was, you took frickin' battalions of Marines, you put them online, you know, and, and our special operations communities, and you just cleared that city from top to bottom, left to right. That's a thing, right?

• 1:18:45Speaker 01

  Them leaving, Russians leaving an area, a town, and our 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're, 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? I think it's.

• 1:19:27Speaker 01

  They're so bad at reinforcing their lines and, you know, whether it's that bullets, Band-Aids, food, water, um. 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 a, 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?

• 1:20:10Speaker 01

  And when they push out from there, if something happens and maybe there's a Ukrainian unit getting too close or that 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 too 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, they're, you know, they're terrible at warfighting and all this kind of stuff. They're blowing up their own whatever and they're just really bad at this.

• 1:20:49Speaker 01

  Then at the same time, then why are they still in your country? You know, like if, if that level of Russian that you, that Ukraine is seeing is the people that they're fighting against, they don't really want to be here. They're not really warfighters. These guys want to leave and 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?

• 1:21:33Speaker 01

  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, we did a massive trip there where we were actually training, you know, those special operations units, the tactics and the medical, that 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, we're building on this. We're, we're really creating. Guys that can actually go out and warfight, right? Guys that can actually go out and run operations and that can take it to the enemy

• 1:22:18Speaker 01

  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, we got another fantastic donation. We were trying to raise fifty thousand dollars 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. We're, 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 raise? I said, we're trying to raise fifty grand and we're going to try and like

• 1:23:03Speaker 01

  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 Cole. He's hook, he's like, all right, well, I can get you more than last time, but it's going to take me a second because like we're putting in huge orders for these things, right? Like, and you know, his team helped out again. It was fantastic. And now though, we had that same problem of, 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.

• 1:23:48Speaker 01

  They didn't take a lot, but like people were 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 mules. 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.

• 1:24:26Shawn Ryan?

  See, or couriers.

• 1:24:27Speaker 01

  Just to get the, just to get the gear in without any hassle.

• 1:24:30Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:31Speaker 01

  You know, and I mean, it was, uh.

• 1:24:34Shawn Ryan?

  Did it go a lot smoother?

• 1:24:35Speaker 01

  Oh, it was fantastic. It was perfect, you know, but it was more expensive.

• 1:24:39Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:40Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:24:51Shawn Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:24:52Speaker 01

  You know, and, and, and I could, because right now it's very difficult. This whole what we're doing, how much it's grown. And it's like, the mission has grown substantially. The mission has grown, but the bank account hasn't.

• 1:25:05Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:06Speaker 01

  Right? Um, 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.

• 1:25:19Shawn Ryan?

  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.

• 1:25:24Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:25:24Shawn Ryan?

  That might help.

• 1:25:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and again, it's like, we have to learn all of that.

• 1:25:28Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:28Speaker 01

  You know, we have to learn all of that and, 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.

• 1:25:47Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:48Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:25:59Shawn Ryan?

  Hmm.

• 1:25:59Speaker 01

  Right? The gear that those guys gave us was just garbage. I won't do it.

• 1:26:03Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:03Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:26:17Speaker 01

  And because his buddy, it happened to him. So why would I hand him something I wouldn't use myself?

• 1:26:22Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Well, let's move back into, we've covered the nonprofit and the donations and everything. Let's move back into.

• 1:26:32Shawn Ryan?

  If you had any guys cycle from the front line back in and what do they need?

• 1:26:36Speaker 01

  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 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, now those guys have some experience and and they go into the training and and they are start working and. The problem is they're not doing that offensive type warfighting 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.

• 1:27:21Speaker 01

  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 be. And they were being used in the beginning. And the way they mainly were being used, guys who have experience, Brits, Canadians, Americans. That have GWAT experience.

• 1:28:02Speaker 01

  They were using them in forward OPs, like observation post type positions. Because if they started taking indirect 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.

• 1:28:29Speaker 01

  Roadways and pathways that armor was moving through. Okay. So they were sending 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, 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.

• 1:28:56Speaker 01

  Why, why? Sean, this is the question I'm saying, and this is the question they're saying. Imagine, and I'm look. 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 Colonel 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 experienced,

• 1:29:39Speaker 01

  obviously in Iraq and Afghanistan, a bunch of them have experienced 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 getting paid 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 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.

• 1:30:23Speaker 01

  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's 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?

• 1:30:58Shawn Ryan?

  Do you know why?

• 1:30:59Speaker 01

  I don't know why. I, my opinion.

• 1:31:05Speaker 01

  My opinion is they don't know how.

• 1:31:08Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think that's what it is?

• 1:31:10Speaker 01

  I think it's they just-

• 1:31:11Shawn Ryan?

  Or do you think it's the money train's gonna stop if they become too effective?

• 1:31:15Speaker 01

  That obviously is a very strong possibility because, you know.

• 1:31:23Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:31:30Shawn Ryan?

  It's a victimized-

• 1:31:32Speaker 01

  Help yourself.

• 1:31:33Shawn Ryan?

  -mentality.

• 1:31:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, help yourself. My opinion, if I was the president of our country, if I was congress.

• 1:31:41Speaker 01

  I'd pull the plug on money to Ukraine. And I'm the, I'm the Ukraine guy. I love these people. My organization's been there five times.

• 1:31:53Speaker 01

  I'm heavily invested in these people. But I'm, 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.

• 1:32:03Shawn Ryan?

  Well, you know, that's another thing, another, th- th- this was actually the same phone call, I believe, uh, that I'm talking, I still remember. Cause I was in a hardware store when I was talking to that.

• 1:32:14Speaker 01

  That's funny.

• 1:32:14Shawn Ryan?

  But, um, but, uh-

• 1:32:17Speaker 01

  I remember that phone call, yeah.

• 1:32:18Shawn Ryan?

  You were mench- you had 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.

• 1:32:33Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:32:34Shawn Ryan?

  And none of the money has come from Ukraine itself.

• 1:32:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think I, I saw something, um-

• 1:32:42Shawn Ryan?

  Why are they not investing in themselves?

• 1:32:44Speaker 01

  So this goes back like since the war started in 2014, when that kinda cleared up, when it calmed down, right? Um, and wasn't so prevalent.

• 1:32:58Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:33:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, but they're there. It's a threat. We should be putting some money towards, you know, building a fence or something, right? Like, we should be doing something. And it never happened. A lot of it has to do with the previous president was very, he had a lot of business in Russia. Uh, big business and was very sympathetic to Russia. Much of the eastern part of Ukraine is very sympathetic to Russia. They speak Russian.

• 1:34:06Shawn Ryan?

  Is it worth defending, honestly?

• 1:34:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that's a question for a Ukrainian. In my opinion, it's like, it's not the same and please don't hate me people from Texas. But it's like saying, well, is Texas worth defending? Right? Because Texas kind of thinks they should be their own thing. It's like a joke, right?

• 1:34:27Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I mean, I think a way, a very relevant way to have this conversation is how much China is investing in US real estate and farmland. You know, eventually the influence from all of that, from all of those investments is going to be all Chinese influence in particular parts, very particular parts of the US, and that's what's happening in Ukraine. Is the, 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.

• 1:35:02Speaker 01

  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 going to align with those things. And, and that has happened, I mean, so much so that they speak Russian. They don't speak Ukrainian. And, um, like they don't even speak the language. And that's a big key to me, right? I mean, I'm a big history buff. Much of history is deter has been determined by language. It's very, it's very interesting, very nuanced.

• 1:35:45Speaker 01

  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, this was 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.

• 1:36:25Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:36:55Speaker 01

  Thought about people from Western Ukraine. Oh, these people are this, they're that, they almost like 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, they just, there's a very weird cultural thing between Western Ukraine and Eastern Ukraine. And it's affecting the war. You know, it's, it's society affecting what politics and all of that affecting war.

• 1:37:25Shawn Ryan?

  So was Ukraine a very divided country before this all happened?

• 1:37:30Speaker 01

  Um, divided how?

• 1:37:32Shawn Ryan?

  Well, you're talking about east and west.

• 1:37:34Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:37:52Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:53Speaker 01

  Um, 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. It's, 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. You know, and obviously as we're there more and, and we're meeting more people, you're learning this about their culture.

• 1:38:16Speaker 01

  We don't have that here, you know, and then 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. Not a thing. You know, you make jokes about them or whatever, but like you, you don't have this fundamental, like, I don't think we're the same thing.

• 1:38:43Shawn Ryan?

  I don't know, Mark, it's looking pretty divided.

• 1:38:44Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, we might be headed that, we might be headed in that direction, right? This could be a lesson we could learn.

• 1:38:50Shawn Ryan?

  I don't think it's geography. I think it's.

• 1:38:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're there, it's more geography because Russia's on that eastern part of, of the country, right? So geography, um, connects it more so like politically probably is where the divide starts in our country. You know, um, so that starts factoring in as well. And, you know, my whole thing is.

• 1:39:14Speaker 01

  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 sixty billion dollars. And you're still standing there with your hand out, give me more money. I'm probably gonna wanna peek in and say, what did you do with the sixty billion dollars? That you can't, like, you want more?

• 1:39:58Speaker 01

  And if I give you more, what are you gonna do with it? 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, I just can't get over that. You can't push them out of 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, 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, 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.

• 1:40:43Speaker 01

  You may not want high numbers of casualties coming out, but you have foreign fighters that you're not even taking their leash off. And the other thing, and 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, 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 didn'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.

• 1:41:23Speaker 01

  You're 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, okay?

• 1:41:40Speaker 01

  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 a 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.

• 1:42:26Speaker 01

  You learn ambush tactics. You learn weapons, heavy weapons tactics, right? Fifty cal's, mark 19's, all this kind of good stuff. Two forty's, all this, you know, whatever, right? If you're gonna be a mortar man in the Marine Corps Infantry, you learn sixty and eighty-one 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. And in the case of the GWAT, 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. Okay?

• 1:43:10Speaker 01

  So again, we said, uh, March, April, May, June, July. So if they would have, when they had two hundred, when I say they, I mean Ukraine, Ukraine proper.

• 1:43:24Speaker 01

  They had two hundred thousand people enlist that weekend before Zach and I got there. It's incredible. Wow. It's incredible. We talked about that. Imagine if Two hundred thousand. Two hundred thousand 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 were 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. Two hundred men you had since the end of February. By July, those two hundred men could have been basically trained warfighters. And they didn't train them. I was the idiot that trained them.

• 1:44:05Speaker 01

  And not them, I didn't train two hundred thousand 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 to BUDS or BRC or, you know. Talking about very basic infantry. To create 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.

• 1:44:36Speaker 01

  Now. This will piss people off too. These guys that have been, some of those guys that 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 requesting 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, um. You know, they're just kind of holding down a town. They're not in any combat, they're not taking indirect fire. They're just kind of there, the, 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, um, gate guard of their little compound and everything, but they're not actively warfighting.

• 1:45:17Speaker 01

  They're serving their country, I'm not putting them down, but what I'm saying is they're fat, they're out of shape and they're requesting cookies from home. That's not a warfighter. And 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.

• 1:46:04Speaker 01

  Never, never, never. They got no training. The ones that stumbled, 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 did, what did the local Ukrainians think of all this? I don't think they understand how it works. They don't. 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 enlists or you draft a guy, send them to six weeks' basic training. Create a basic training school course for these guys.

• 1:46:49Speaker 01

  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, get them in shape. These guys now, I can show you, I mean, I've showed you pictures. These guys are. When did he enlist? End of February? Why does 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 two hundred thousand people joined the US Army, the US Navy, the US Marine Corps or Air Force over a weekend, it would put a strain on the system. It would, right? Yeah. You know, recruiters are out there like, I wish that would happen, right?

• 1:47:28Speaker 01

  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. Figure that problem out. Yeah. Right? That's a blessing. Two hundred, two hundred thousand people sign up that weren't there yesterday, wanting to go take care of this problem for you. Figure that out.

• 1:47:53Speaker 01

  I mean, I don't care, Sean. It sounds like.

• 1:47:57Shawn Ryan?

  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. Then you have 200,000 Ukrainians who are standing up, who want to take their country back.

• 1:48:28Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:48:28Shawn Ryan?

  You can't necessarily blame them because they've never been in war, they don't know what it's like, they don't know what to expect. But you have a country that is completely blowing off the asset of 200,000 people. And, and so, how the fuck do you even fix this?

• 1:48:49Speaker 01

  I mean, I, yeah, I don't know. If I, 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, or you talk to a Ukrainian, you say, "Look, this is what needs to be done." When a dude comes in, you get 20 guys, and it's time to like, like a MEPS type thing, right? They come in, they enlist, or they get whatever, you give them their medical checks, now it's time to send them somewhere? You'd 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 of infantry.

• 1:49:31Speaker 01

  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?

• 1:49:40Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:49:41Speaker 01

  I, I get it, maybe there's not enough time for them to do any kind of workup or anything like that, okay, but you put them in a unit now, and, and at least they know what they're doing, and they're in shape.

• 1:49:50Speaker 01

  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 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 gonna, you know, the commanders are old and that that's just not the way we've ever 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.

• 1:50:29Speaker 01

  Okay, well, you might end up not having a country.

• 1:50:33Speaker 01

  You know, and to be honest, at that point, remember, I'm the love Ukraine guy. At that point, you don't deserve to have your country.

• 1:50:44Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:50:52Speaker 01

  Like, if, if you're not gonna change this now, when there's people standing on your soil raping your women, totally decimating villages, women and children, blowing up like actively target, and you mentioned it today at the beginning, you know, seventy-five rockets actively targeting civilian places in your cities and towns.

• 1:51:17Speaker 01

  And you're just gonna 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? How do you deserve, like, and the problem is, it's not the people. The people, 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,

• 1:51:59Speaker 01

  that has to get done in parliament through law and some of these, and you're like, alright, 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?

• 1:52:14Speaker 01

  Okay, then we have nothing more to talk about. You know, and it sounds like I'm talking out of both sides of my face. I don't care about Ukraine.

• 1:52:23Shawn Ryan?

  I th- I you're not talking out of both sides of your face. We addressed this at the beginning.

• 1:52:29Shawn Ryan?

  And that's what I love about what you're doing is you're do you're helping people. You're not getting involved in the political shit.

• 1:52:35Speaker 01

  I don't care about Ukraine, and I know you could take that clip and you could twist it and you could say, oh, don't give that organization your money. He says he's 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 gonna suffer. All the politicians at the end of the day, if Russia takes over this much land or that much land, those politicians are gonna make deals at the end of the day, and they're gonna be well taken care of. Right? We know that. That's how that stuff works. The people, the Uris that live in Ukraine are not. Right? They're the ones that are gonna suffer, and the reason they're gonna suffer is because they're trying to trust their government and their country.

• 1:53:19Speaker 01

  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 thirty five. 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?

• 1:54:06Shawn Ryan?

  What is the answer?

• 1:54:08Speaker 01

  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 of your country? Do you want to make a deal with them over 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 lobbing artillery at each other,

• 1:54:55Speaker 01

  I don't want to say that's not war, but you can't really get anything done.

• 1:54:58Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:58Speaker 01

  And the other thing that's happening,

• 1:55:02Speaker 01

  Ukraine is not attacking Russia in Russia either. And that's a whole, I get it, you're like, yeah, but Mark, that's can't be a thing. Well, 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 lobbing artillery into 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 into Russia. But my thought is, at this point, why the hell not?

• 1:55:45Shawn Ryan?

  Does it appear that the money is being disseminated? All sixty billion that we've sent, is it being dis- are you seeing it change the battle space at all?

• 1:55:55Speaker 01

  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 sixty thousand dollars to buy X amount of thousands of pairs of boots, because winter's coming and those guys don't have boots.

• 1:56:10Shawn Ryan?

  So we sent sixty billion dollars to Ukraine and they don't even have fucking boots?

• 1:56:15Speaker 01

  Can't even put boots on a guy's feet.

• 1:56:18Speaker 01

  I'm the one that's taking IFACS there. These guys get these IFACS, they're blown away. They can't believe they have a piece of gear like that. You know, we're the ones and and the viewers for the show are the ones. Shanghai guy sending me their personal plate carriers.

• 1:56:34Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:35Speaker 01

  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 mag pouches and camelback 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 sixty billion dollars was buying it for them.

• 1:57:10Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:11Speaker 01

  You know, and I get it. Javelin missiles cost a lot of money. And, you know, I mean, we're not sending them tanks. They're not running around with M one A ones and stuff, right? Um, I don't know what the money is being spent on. I, you know, it's not my thing, you know, I, I hope it's being spent.

• 1:57:27Shawn Ryan?

  You're not seeing what you thought you would see with that.

• 1:57:30Speaker 01

  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 isn't, 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 are putting magazines in pocket and pockets. They were, okay, well, yeah, it goes to bullets and all this. Okay, well, these guys were running around with one magazine because that's all they could have. One magazine.

• 1:58:15Shawn Ryan?

  That's what twenty rounds in AK forty seven?

• 1:58:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, thirty rounds.

• 1:58:18Shawn Ryan?

  Thirty?

• 1:58:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so it's like, you know, and I don't need a I amized inventory of where my tax money is 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.

• 1:58:33Shawn Ryan?

  We should definitely see a change in the tides with.

• 1:58:36Speaker 01

  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 chess rigs to various other things we'll say IR type stuff, strobes, um, phones. Like, hey, we need phones to communicate with each other because we don't have radios.

• 1:59:09Shawn Ryan?

  Holy, the special operations unit does not have fucking.

• 1:59:12Speaker 01

  It just definitely all kinds of things that they want that you're thinking like that should be issued gear. Backpacks, I need a day pack.

• 1:59:24Speaker 01

  What do you mean you can't get a day pack? How many day packs that you get to choose from? This big one, this small one, this one I could dive with, this one I could jump with, 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, I'll do it a hundred times over. You know?

• 1:59:51Shawn Ryan?

  Makes you question.

• 1:59:52Speaker 01

  But why do I have to do it? And why is there, you know, like? Can we get a couple backpacks with the sixty billion dollars? You know, can we shave off a couple backpacks?

• 2:00:04Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I get it, that's, that's a silly thing to say, but like.

• 2:00:07Shawn Ryan?

  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.

• 2:00:19Speaker 01

  And that with the Legion thing, there are a lot of guys who are going over there and um,

• 2:00:26Speaker 01

  you know, they're, they're there, ready to do something. Some of them are just sticking it out. You know, and I don't know what their home situation is like or whatever, but they're sticking it out, hoping they can make a difference. Some of them are like, I'm not doing this, like this is, I came here to help. And now you're telling me you sit on my hands.

• 2:00:45Shawn Ryan?

  You know, I think, 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. Let's get Yuri's opinion on, as a Ukrainian. Sure. On what's going on over there and what he thinks about the Ukrainian government.

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• 2:03:22Shawn Ryan?

  Yuri.

• 2:03:23Speaker 05

  Shawn.

• 2:03:24Shawn Ryan?

  Welcome.

• 2:03:26Shawn Ryan?

  So you are the whole reason that Mark and the Overwatch Foundation even went 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'm really looking 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?

• 2:03:56Speaker 05

  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, just a very 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. So I just called them right away. I said like, hey, make sure you have that emergency bag ready. Just make sure you're like, because I didn't know what to expect.

• 2:04:35Shawn Ryan?

  How many family members do you have over there? Your home is in Illinois, correct?

• 2:04:40Speaker 05

  Yes, so in America, just me, my wife and my daughter. Just three of us. Everybody else is in there in Ukraine.

• 2:04:47Shawn Ryan?

  Okay, okay. What is your, as the war has developed, it's come a long way. There's a lot of new developments have come out.

• 2:04:58Shawn Ryan?

  What is your opinion on how the war is being run on the Ukrainian side?

• 2:05:05Speaker 05

  So it's it's kind of hard for me because I didn't understand, I didn't know what's war, right? Like I said, like 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, because I talk to them every day. I talk to guys who's on the front line, who's getting ready, who got wounded, injured, like all this, I talk to them. So the way I see it, um, we're doing so great, 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

• 2:05:47Speaker 05

  gonna be done like by, let's say by winter. It won't be, it won't happen. And I think that people in Ukraine, they started understanding it too, because they just start to live their lives. Like, they're just like, okay, this is what it is. This is new reality. We just have to adapt to this.

• 2:06:03Shawn Ryan?

  Are you happy with the response from the Ukrainian people with how they're reacting to all of this?

• 2:06:11Speaker 05

  Yes and no.

• 2:06:12Shawn Ryan?

  What are you happy about?

• 2:06:14Speaker 05

  So I'm happy about how they're trying to to help UAF, Ukrainian Armed Forces. They they're doing really great stuff. So Ukrainians were like basically collecting money for Bayraktar, which is the drones that the Turkey's making, making the drones that that you can like 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.

• 2:06:56Shawn Ryan?

  There's no what?

• 2:06:57Speaker 05

  There's no bombing here, no shit, like basically bombs are not like coming into this town, this region, so there is no war here.

• 2:07:04Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 2:07:05Speaker 05

  Which is like crazy to understand and...

• 2:07:10Speaker 05

  They don't realize, like, they, they think, like, uh, some, sometimes people even saying, like, oh, I, I never send you there. Cause like, you know, soldiers are there up 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 USSR 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 gonna do something for the, for those guys." Cause they're there, they're like, uh, sleeping on the ground. That I have, sometimes that I have, like, we have to be honest, like, Ukraine, like, just getting to, to be like, uh, trying to reach Western world and trying to be on that level, right?

• 2:07:54Speaker 05

  So we're gonna have that ammunition, we're gonna have that gear, we're gonna have that stuff. So people buying out of their own pockets, right? And Ukrainians, I think in the future, it would be cool, like, to have a film or even a book about how volunteering, movement going into Ukraine. Cause there is a saying, like, people even say, like, "There's no such a thing the Ukrainian volunteer cannot get in this world." We, we recently, like, a couple of months ago, we bought the satellite. And access to different satellites so we can get, like, better pictures. Like, which is, which is crazy. It's like, I'm happy about that. I'm happy, but the, the younger generation realize, 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're behind, they're behind, really behind.

• 2:08:38Speaker 05

  And they, they're not looking for a freedom. Like, especially me, being here for eleven years, like, I started understanding what is freedom. Like, I do understand, like, from talking, like, to, like, 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 that we still have, like, 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 gonna get robbed, steal, all the corruption stuff, it's still going on.

• 2:09:21Speaker 05

  Like, I mean, I love Ukraine, I'm Ukrainian, like, in my soul, right? But I have to be honest. I cannot just, 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 I'm not happy about.

• 2:09:41Shawn Ryan?

  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, in the war as a whole? Because talking to Mark, he

• 2:09:57Shawn Ryan?

  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 US, from Europe, from the UK and how they're handling all these foreign fighters showing up at the Foreign Legion to help get rid of Russians.

• 2:10:24Speaker 05

  I see what you're saying. I would say I'm like sixty, seventy percent happy with what they're doing.

• 2:10:29Shawn Ryan?

  You are?

• 2:10:30Speaker 05

  I'm not like fully satisfied because like, we actually had just recently this conversation with Mark. Like, if God forbid something like that happens here, like, you'll be kicked out like, like that, in a moment. Like, the enemy will be out of this country, like, never would something happen this way, right? Over there, they're just trying to be corrupted. Like, to be honest with you, when the revolution started in 2013... The whole, the whole thing started. I was like, super excited about that because not like excited, kind of like quote, because I, I thought like, okay, it's time to wipe the, all these like USSR mentality communists 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.

• 2:11:15Speaker 05

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

• 2:11:40Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. What, what do you think the biggest fear? What are, 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, are they? How scared are they about that?

• 2:12:00Speaker 05

  So, they are pretty scared. Cause there is a good reason to be scared. Nuclear weapon is, is not a thing to joke around. And Ukraine had in, 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 the clouds and everything, all their radiation like traveled like, and we have people like who, who been suffering from that. Like, a little bit like people older than me, like probably like two, three years older than me, they, they face the like, uh, problems with their, 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 it can happen.

• 2:12:44Speaker 05

  Like, if, if, if, if Russians saying they can do it, like, and, and technically and hypothetically, they can, they have ability to do that, right? And like, like today's even events, like showing us that they're not scared of anything. I don't know, they stupid, they, they just like believe in themselves, or there's such a propaganda going on in that, that country. I don't know what's the reason, but they not scared. They like really can use it. And people are scared of that. Cause where my wife from, it's not that far away from the plant, the nuclear plant. There was like a lot of things going on around that. People were scared. They're like, oh, we wanna move a little west in Ukraine because it's like closer to EU and they think that the Russians won't shoot it

• 2:13:28Speaker 05

  because it's too close to EU so they don't wanna like get into the fight, like direct fight with the EU and NATO and all those countries.

• 2:13:38Shawn Ryan?

  What is... The reason I'm asking this stuff is because we only hear what the media, you know, wants to tell us. And so, you being from Ukraine, you kinda 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?

• 2:14:11Speaker 05

  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 hryvnia. Right now, on my last trip, it was 42 already.

• 2:14:35Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, wow.

• 2:14:35Speaker 05

  So, it's doubled. And like, our first trip, it was 31. So, it's like slowly, but 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 insane because they have euros. Like, it's supposed to be much more expensive, right? And it's cheaper. And people just don't know what's gonna happen in the future.

• 2:15:09Speaker 05

  And also, like, they cannot leave home, right? Ukrainians are like, when the whole thing started, they left the country, but they with the intention to come back. They're now leaving for good. Yeah, there are a percentage of people who left for good. Like, okay, we're going, we're not coming back. But 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 is no work, right? There's no jobs. Like, it's very hard to find a job. And... People who's working like, uh, let's say law enforcement and like, uh, doctors, they scared too, because as we can see, those, those places getting bombed, right? All their like plants, like the, like power plants, all that stuff.

• 2:15:53Speaker 05

  People scared to go there too, because like, you don't know what to, what to wait for. Like, you just don't know what to expect.

• 2:15:58Shawn Ryan?

  So the power workers and the medical people are scared to go to work?

• 2:16:02Speaker 05

  Yeah, they still go.

• 2:16:03Shawn Ryan?

  They're gonna get bombed because it's a power facility, medical.

• 2:16:06Speaker 05

  They just don't know what to wait. They're like, what I know to expect, like what, what's gonna happen? Like, could be here, tomorrow, could be now.

• 2:16:13Shawn Ryan?

  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, consider themselves Russians there. Do you, what is, what is the pulse of the Ukrainian people when it comes to, should you guys give up the land?

• 2:16:44Speaker 05

  No.

• 2:16:45Shawn Ryan?

  You don't think you should?

• 2:16:46Speaker 05

  We don't.

• 2:16:47Shawn Ryan?

  Is that the overwhelming majority of the Ukrainians?

• 2:16:50Speaker 05

  Yes. Like, people, yes, there is like people who think that, because like you said, but since, since the war 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, we're gonna take ours back. Like, and people believe in that. People, the people want it. Like, we, 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 wanna be free. Why are you taking us? Like, so, the whole war, the whole country is united because of war. Yes, and it was, it was really divided.

• 2:17:33Speaker 05

  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.

• 2:17:45Speaker 05

  And I'm from Western, so I grew up like as a Ukrainian, Ukrainian hardcore Ukrainian. And I remember once I came, uh, we went on a, on a tour to Lviv. And I came back home and I had like a little like 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? Like, how are you raising your son? Like, this is like Russians, they are our brothers, they are like, they are now neighbors, you know? So it was like that. But now, like even my mom said like, we're never gonna forgive them. Never. Like, they've done bad stuff to us before, but right now, we won't forgive them.

• 2:18:24Shawn Ryan?

  So, your job at Overwatch Foundation sounds like a lot of it is translation, translating what Mark and the team is saying when it comes to medical training, tactics, whatever, whatever they need translated.

• 2:18:43Shawn Ryan?

  You're gonna have a lot more of a gauge on how motivated the Ukrainian people are that you guys are training. Are they able to?

• 2:18:57Shawn Ryan?

  What's the word I'm looking for? How much of this information are they taking in? And how motivated are they to learn these tactics and the medical training?

• 2:19:09Speaker 05

  So here's, so I'll split this in two, okay? Cause we've done three trips, so I'll split this in two. Like first two trips. Most of the people who were trained were volunteers. The war hit, time to defend my country, time to grab some weapon, and time to do the good stuff, 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, like absorbing it, like no tomorrow, they've been training after, like after we left, like they, you can see it. Like, you can see when the people change, like even if you leave. So it was like, it was crazy. Second time, we came back, same thing. It was, it was crazy.

• 2:19:52Speaker 05

  Like, people like, really trying, doing stuff that we showed them, they realized that What we teach them, what Overwatch teach them, it's it's very useful and it's very easy. It's not like, you know, like old style, like when you they throw like bunch of information on you and then you just get lost, you overwhelmed the information, you don't know what to do. You're like mixing the stuff up in your head. So this is like very effective, very useful. So in this third trip, it's already becoming mixed. So probably like twenty-five percent is already kind of like taking it kind of like, ah, you know, like you're here, okay, I'm just like, I was told to be here. Seventy-five percent is still like legit, they they good to go, they're ready to go, they're motivated, they see what's going on.

• 2:20:37Speaker 05

  But I think because of the the action kind of slowed down a little bit, right? It's it's going a long way, right? So it kind of slowed down. People start like being relaxed, they're getting used to it. That's me and my wife discussed, like people getting used to war.

• 2:20:51Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:20:52Speaker 05

  They realize like.

• 2:20:53Shawn Ryan?

  Complacency.

• 2:20:53Speaker 05

  Huh?

• 2:20:53Shawn Ryan?

  Complacency.

• 2:20:54Speaker 05

  Yeah, they like, okay, this that's it, so and people being drafted right now. People, there is the patrols that going outside and they just stop and they're like, hey, let me see your paperwork. Our uh our medic told me he got stopped and they check his paperwork. So people getting stopped like like from six AM to six PM, just patrols like two people just walking around like and they check paperwork, like your documents, and they can give, they they can draft you, right? And that's what I think like that's a little problem right now. It's not ma- major problem, but there is a little bit problem because when you drafted and you volunteer, like it's two different things.

• 2:21:35Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:21:36Speaker 05

  When you volunteer, you're super motivated. When you drafted, it's kind of like somebody made you do this.

• 2:21:41Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:42Speaker 05

  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, ah, okay, like, cause we we were, you know, we're trying, we we're trying to praise them for good stuff because in the first day they did good. But then you guys like who never like saw us, never meet us, they they started like joking around. And we're just like slamming like, hey, guys, if you think you're so, so cool and you're everything, it's time for jokes, like, we can go home. Like, we all have families, we're volunteering here, like, we're not, you know, like, we, we took off from work 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,

• 2:22:26Speaker 05

  and I, I, I know their commander, I came to commander, I said, like, look, tomorrow we come, I don't wanna see this anymore. Cause 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, 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, twenty-five percent, like I said, twenty-five percent kind of like fooling it all, which is like, that was shocking for me.

• 2:23:00Shawn Ryan?

  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 winter. How worried are people of Ukraine about the power situation?

• 2:23:20Speaker 05

  They are. They are worried because...

• 2:23:22Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think they understand how catastrophic that's gonna be?

• 2:23:25Speaker 05

  They have a slight understanding because, um, prices went up like two years ago in Ukraine, like, energy, like, uh, prices went up a little bit and right now, it's even worse, like, so just, just fresh information. Got a lot of bombing today, like, recently, today, this morning, from five o'clock to ten P M, five P M to ten P M, there is like people sending messages and government saying that, please shut it down, like, electricity, do not use as much electricity, do not use those electric, 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 has to go to work crazy and they all been like hit.

• 2:24:10Speaker 05

  So, people realizing, and they realizing that prices will go up for sure. There's no, no, no question about that. And, but people don't have that much money, right? Because of war, the economy collapsing. So, they, they do understand it, maybe not to the level, like, of how it's gonna be, but do understand, so, for instance, my mom... We have a two-floor building, my home. My mom bought the, uh, little like 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're just like, like that till the morning. And in the morning, everybody go to work. So there, there is no need until evening.

• 2:24:54Speaker 05

  So they're trying to, to kind of save and, 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, uh, the actual like batteries that they warm up. So they just don't blow up because they're full of water. We have like old system. So they just don't blow up from, from, from ice water inside.

• 2:25:15Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, wow.

• 2:25:16Speaker 05

  So, yeah, they, they just do like that. 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 to, for like a shower, like wash your head and, and stuff like that.

• 2:25:28Shawn Ryan?

  Damn. How, how bad do you think it's gonna get? This winter?

• 2:25:36Speaker 05

  This winter?

• 2:25:37Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think they're gonna make a major advance into Ukraine this winter?

• 2:25:40Speaker 05

  Russians?

• 2:25:41Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:25:43Speaker 05

  I mean, I don't think it's gonna like major. They're gonna be like, so I think, my personal opinion, it's gonna be like a scenario of, of world that's going on since 2014. On a major scale, it's 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. Cause they, they, it's new. They're, they didn't know what to do. Now they start adapting, I think. So one of the guys who I'm talking there,

• 2:26:26Speaker 05

  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 that, like taking those downs. Cause they, they cause a lot of problems now. And if they're, if Russia will keep bombing like plants, our like, uh, power plants, energy plants, that's gonna drain much more than, than just, just take an open fight with Ukrainian armed forces.

• 2:26:58Shawn Ryan?

  Would you like to see Ukraine become a little more aggressive?

• 2:27:02Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 2:27:03Shawn Ryan?

  You would?

• 2:27:04Speaker 05

  Yes. I think, so, that's my, um, we had this conversation as well, and just my understanding, like,

• 2:27:14Speaker 05

  we get all these weapons, right, all the funding and everything, but we take it under conditions, right? There are certain conditions, and I don't know those conditions, 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, "Oh, we're just gonna like slowly take it back, take it back." And, yes, personally, me, I would like to see more aggressive. Like, when, when Ukraine start taking part, like Kharkiv oblast, Kherson oblast, the Parissa region, all those places, like, people are super happy about that. It's like the whole Instagram reel, like, and, and old friends just talking about this. Because we started being aggressive, so Russians just like took off and they left.

• 2:27:57Speaker 05

  And we started like taking back and, and taking our stuff back. It was just crazy. Like, people were super happy. So, everybody wants to be, Ukraine to be a little bit more aggressive. Because the more aggressive you are, the faster it's all gonna end. And everybody is looking for faster ending of this world. Nobody wants it.

• 2:28:15Shawn Ryan?

  How would you like to see Ukraine become more aggressive?

• 2:28:20Shawn Ryan?

  What would you like to see happen?

• 2:28:23Speaker 05

  Stuff that we do on a bigger scale.

• 2:28:27Speaker 05

  Like, what Overwatch is doing in Ukraine, just on a bigger scale.

• 2:28:30Shawn Ryan?

  More training.

• 2:28:30Speaker 05

  More training for everyone, but, like, like, for real training. And they do have, do, 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 the weapons, like, they get trained, right? Because the beginning, nobody knows what to use, like, all like Javelins, Anlos, 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.

• 2:29:02Shawn Ryan?

  Would you like to see Zelensky utilize these warfighters that have been coming from Canada, US, Great Britain, anywhere, anywhere else? Utilize them more in taking out maybe certain Russian positions?

• 2:29:21Shawn Ryan?

  Because they have a lot of experience there.

• 2:29:22Speaker 05

  They do, I know.

• 2:29:23Shawn Ryan?

  That's sitting on the sideline, not doing anything.

• 2:29:25Speaker 05

  I see what you're saying. I would like them to get involved in more training, Ukrainian forces, because...

• 2:29:30Shawn Ryan?

  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 training?

• 2:29:41Speaker 05

  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 war is. And they can teach soldiers, like, they just transfer knowledge, right? That's number one. Because if we lose a, like, good fighter who knows what war is, like, if we lose him on the battlefield and he didn't transfer knowledge, it's bad, you know? If he was able to train the knowledge, to transfer knowledge, and become like commander of like, like, unit or something like that, you know? Like, just train people, show them how to do it. And I know it's happening. I know all those, like, volunteer, uh, uh, like, groups of people, like, who's doing, like, different tasks over there.

• 2:30:26Speaker 05

  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, that, they were taught by, by foreign religions, right? Now, that's the number one reason. Number two reason, because, my personal opinion, if Russians will start seeing, like, foreign, like, fighters, like, like, taking them out, and they will take them out. Russians, they're not strong. They're like, from what I see and from what I hear, like, Russian army, it's almost a joke, right? They have some technology, yeah, but they are fighters. It's a joke. Come on. But, so, these, they can take them, like, pretty quick, I think.

• 2:31:08Speaker 05

  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, 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, in, in Europe, right? Because, like, "Oh, your fighters are fighting here, so we're defending ourselves." You know, so that's, that's two reasons that I think the fighters should be involved in the training and helping, like, Ukrainians to do that. And they're doing it, just on a bigger scale, probably, like, more advanced. Not, not advanced, no, it's a wrong word, more like...

• 2:31:50Speaker 05

  More often and more like between like different units, right? Instead of just just going and taking a fight.

• 2:31:57Shawn Ryan?

  What is your opinion of Zelensky?

• 2:32:01Speaker 05

  Honestly, like if I would see him, I'd probably like hack him and like I and I cry like that I I have an honor to meet such a person like in my life. Like you, you have to understand that before he became a president, he was like, everybody had been saying like he was a comic, like not, he was a comic. He came from like all this comedy show in Russia, like in nineties. 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. It's like, oh, I'll open something on the side and they didn't grant him a permission. They said like, no, no, no, you're gonna be under us. You're gonna go do what what we saying Moscow 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.

• 2:32:45Speaker 05

  But you know, when all this thing started, it's like, oh, I'll be the president. After that show, right? He had like a show that he was, he became a president. He started like doing good things. And it starts 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? You know, but he came and he started making things happening like. 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 roads. They were perfect, like America, like amazing. Now it's all gone, obviously, but he did stuff. He said something, he did it.

• 2:33:28Speaker 05

  Like and people like, and especially after after what happened right now, like after war and how he stood up like, like it'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 ride, I need ammo. Like, so that's what people just keep saying this. They're like, they're amazing and he's, he's doing great. Yes, his team, probably he had some like scumbags in his team and and some rats that not doing great and screwing him over, but he is a person, he's a leader. He took the whole country and he's leading a country and he's like saying like, no, I'm not scared. Yeah, Ukraine is big, but like much smaller than Russia, right? And but he is like, oh, I'm not scared, I'm going.

• 2:34:09Speaker 05

  He's not scared to call all the presidents, prime ministers like of different countries and talking to them. Yes, he's asking for a lot of money, but Personally, him, he's not gonna steal that money.

• 2:34:21Shawn Ryan?

  You don't think he is?

• 2:34:22Speaker 05

  I, I don't think he is. He was pretty wealthy at, at the time he became a president. Cause he was super successful. I don't think personally him is stealing money. And no one in this, in, in that country, like who I know, like who I talk to, no one think that way. They just, they just, they're really amazing. They, they're not happy like, like with government, right? Cause they, they making mistakes with his team. Let's say not government. I'm, I don't wanna talk about everyone like, but, you know, about his team, there's like scumbags there. They do bad stuff. They do steal 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 some, and he's, he's do, he's like cleaning stuff up, uh, stuff up.

• 2:35:06Speaker 05

  Like basically like, uh, like a couple of months ago, he, he fired the SBU, head of SBU, which is like, uh, uh, which is, uh, protective service of Ukraine, kinda like, you know, special forces of Ukraine. The head of it, he fired it because there was like a bunch of like, people in the region, like workers, right? They were traitors. They just been sending info to Russians and they started working on it. Like they're like, okay, you're not doing good job. Like, how come like so many of your workers betrayed this country? So you out, next. He's not scared. He's like, on his second day of being a president, he, he came to parliament and said like, okay, guys, thank you very much. You all done.

• 2:35:49Speaker 05

  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 hundred percent, obviously, but I think he was pretty successful.

• 2:36:03Shawn Ryan?

  Well, that's good. I'm actually surprised to hear that. It's, it's good that you have that much faith in him.

• 2:36:09Speaker 05

  Yeah, like, lots of Ukrainians. The, the only, the most important thing that they said, like, he didn't leave the country. So he was like, he stayed. Like all those days, like he stayed there. Like in the worst days of the beginning of war, worst 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, that's what the strong leader and good leader should do. First of all, he has to unite everyone. And then like, hey, this is the direction we're going. Let's go, everybody.

• 2:36:42Shawn Ryan?

  When are you heading back over?

• 2:36:45Speaker 05

  When or where?

• 2:36:46Shawn Ryan?

  When are you heading back to Ukraine?

• 2:36:48Speaker 05

  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 like get donations. Like, as soon as we have money to go there, like, because we don't want to show up over there with empty hands. Right? Training is, is, is great, it's amazing, but you need to like bring stuff as well, right? Like, you have to care of boys, like, who's coming with you, like, because those people, they just volunteer, like, so you have to help them. So, like, we need money for that. Like, just so you understand, like, how, what kind of like impact Overwatch is doing right now?

• 2:37:26Speaker 05

  Like, we found a people in New Hampshire who donated thirty pallets of medical gowns. Thirty pallets, which is like over thirty thousand peoples, uh, thirty thousand pieces, sorry. We just didn't have the money to take it and deliver it to Ukraine, to all the hospitals and everything. Like, I found another, uh, another foundation, like, another nonprofit, he was able to do it, and I connected them. All this stuff in Ukraine already. It's been picked up like in a week and everything went there, but it's like thirty pallets. We found a guy who messaged us and who helped us. He's like, I can get you sixteen hundred combat boots for a price that no one can beat. No one can beat that price. He's like, I'll do it for you, like, now. We just didn't have the money.

• 2:38:11Speaker 05

  I had to connect again, like, I had to find the people, like, a month, like, Ukrainian nonprofits in, in US, 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 already.

• 2:38:22Shawn Ryan?

  What do you think the people need the most? If you had an endless bank account, what would you bring? The one item?

• 2:38:30Speaker 05

  Oh, wow.

• 2:38:31Shawn Ryan?

  That you would bring, the, the, the volunteers or Ukrainian military? What is the one item that if you had in your bank account?

• 2:38:40Speaker 05

  I see the question, like, it's, it's pretty hard question.

• 2:38:49Speaker 05

  Probably like, uh, I would say gear.

• 2:38:54Shawn Ryan?

  What kind of gear?

• 2:38:55Speaker 05

  Just clothing, first of all, and second of all, like all the, what's his name?

• 2:39:02Speaker 05

  All the, like, plate carriers.

• 2:39:05Shawn Ryan?

  Tactical gear?

• 2:39:06Speaker 05

  Yeah, tactical gear.

• 2:39:07Shawn Ryan?

  Best, bulletproof vest.

• 2:39:08Speaker 05

  Just, 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, of the soldiers? Just regular guys. And so, people saying like, oh, you're getting paid a lot of money for being on the frontline. And one of the guys, he's, he posted a picture on Instagram, he posted a picture of himself and the whole gear. He's like, here, that's where my money is. That's what I spend my money on. Right? And just, just tactical gear, yeah, that would be, that would be amazing. And tactical gear and probably like IFX and stuff like that.

• 2:39:41Shawn Ryan?

  Medical gear.

• 2:39:42Speaker 05

  Medical gear, obviously, like, medical gear has to be always there, because, I mean,

• 2:39:48Speaker 05

  we were not, like, and it's hard to say because I never served, right? But we were, we don't have such, 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, you saw the IFX that we brought, right? Amazing, amazing stuff. I've, I've seen like doctors, I've talked to combat doctors over there, and they're like, this is great, this is amazing. It's, 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, and you know, like, if, some like people who's trying to buy it here, they buying them crappy stuff and send it, they don't know how to use it, they don't know what to do with that, like, so, like, yeah, well, like, just go back,

• 2:40:32Speaker 05

  sorry, I got off the track a little bit, just go back to, to your, your original question. Yes, tactical gear for the guys, because winter is coming, they need gear, right? Like clothes, like some, some warm gear and medical, yes. That would be two, two the most important things, I think, at the moment.

• 2:40:48Shawn Ryan?

  Roger that. Do you have anything else you wanna say before I bring Mark back on?

• 2:40:57Speaker 05

  I mean, I just wanna thank Overwatch, I wanna thank you, and I wanna thank all the guys who helped us because you have to realize, like, I came here when I was 21, right? And I had this, like, I didn't know what's freedom is. I thought I did, but I did not. Because, like, yeah, we were free, like, independent, but we're not, like, always free, right? Now, here, talking to you, like, veterans, like, especially like at our gym, like, I talk to, like, law enforcement, I talk to veterans and see what they're doing. I just wanna say thank you. Because you guys taught me how it is,

• 2:41:39Speaker 05

  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, like, we have our own problems here, like, in the 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. Stood up, going to help. You know, and, yeah, thank you for that. Thank you for changing my mindset and changing my mentality in that. Because, like, I'm not 100% there, like, because it's hard, it's gonna take time. But understanding, like, why this country is free and so successful, right?

• 2:42:23Speaker 05

  Even with the bad stuff as well. Like, we're still successful. Because we're doing great. Because of the people, not because of, like, who's there up, but just because of people.

• 2:42:33Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. All right, Yuri. Well, hope to see you again and good luck over there.

• 2:42:39Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 2:42:40Shawn Ryan?

  You're gonna need it.

• 2:42:41Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 2:42:42Shawn Ryan?

  Cheers.

• 2:42:42Speaker 05

  Thanks.

• 2:42:48Shawn Ryan?

  I want to give a big thank you out right now to all the Vigilance Elite patrons out there that are watching the show right now. Just want to say thank you, guys. You are our top supporters and you're what makes this show actually happen. If you're not on Vigilance Elite Patreon, I want to 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

• 2:43:32Shawn Ryan?

  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

• 2:44:15Shawn Ryan?

  much anything you can think of, it's on there. So anyways, go to www.patreon.com/vigilanceelite, 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.

• 2:44:45Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Mark, you and Yuri have some very different opinions on what's going on over there.

• 2:44:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely.

• 2:44:51Shawn Ryan?

  It's interesting. You said that was gonna 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 and E over there. I was hoping you could talk a little bit about that.

• 2:45:27Speaker 01

  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 that have, that are serving there or have served there. But I don't have actual, any kind of connection there.

• 2:46:06Speaker 01

  We got involved in a kind of

• 2:46:12Speaker 01

  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? Gave us the whole rundown, everything that happened. They were very thorough. They're obviously really trying to find this Marine.

• 2:46:43Speaker 01

  You know, kinda combat action reports of the engagement and what she went missing. What were those reports? There were reports, after action reports from people who were actually there.

• 2:47:00Speaker 01

  During the firefight and during the engagement. I'm not gonna mention anybody's names, obviously, but uh, they basically were in a forward OP. OP is an observation point. Yeah, and they were, they were doing a reconnaissance on a Russian unit that was in their area. And they were discovered and were attacked with um, small indirect fire. And I believe some kinda 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.

• 2:47:44Speaker 01

  You know, we had all the kinda satellite imagery. We had some very, you know, I had recordings um, 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.

• 2:48:03Speaker 01

  And it was kinda needle in a haystack, 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's very well trained, right? School trained sniper.

• 2:48:27Speaker 01

  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 randos 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.

• 2:49:01Speaker 01

  And.

• 2:49:04Speaker 01

  You know, I don't think, to me, he's an American Marine, oversees MIA. 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 abandoned 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 Luttrell and, and, and his team and, and these kind of guys. We don't do that to people, like, we go get them and, and even if, you know, God forbid, someone turns up KIA, we go get them too.

• 2:49:46Speaker 01

  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 um 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.

• 2:50:30Speaker 01

  I think one of two things happened. I either think, from everything I've saw, read, everyone I've talked to, um, 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 and undercover.

• 2:50:59Speaker 01

  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 parading 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.

• 2:51:26Speaker 01

  It's still actively ongoing, but it's definitely much colder than it was closer to when it happened.

• 2:51:35Speaker 01

  But we were, you know, definitely involved and still are trying to pull some threads on, you know, finding him and making sure he's okay, even to the point where I've committed to if, if we can even find, you know, 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.

• 2:52:06Shawn Ryan?

  Are you personally attached to this gentleman?

• 2:52:08Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:52:09Shawn Ryan?

  No?

• 2:52:09Speaker 01

  Nope.

• 2:52:11Shawn Ryan?

  How many other Americans do you think have been captured, killed?

• 2:52:15Speaker 01

  I don't know exactly. I know there's been, um, I know there have been people in the Foreign Legion that have been, um, taken prisoner and killed, obviously, because they were doing a lot of the fighting initially. And, um, I know of a couple of guys, um, 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, the rug pulled out from under them. Um, 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, and report back, or like I mentioned before, they were

• 2:52:57Speaker 01

  doing that, they were heavily being involved in doing that land, landmine, planting the landmines.

• 2:53:05Speaker 01

  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 further. I don't know if that pissed off some of the Foreign Legion leadership and, and that made them pull those guys back. Um, you know, cause 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, or a recon patrol 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, um, some other reason. But, um, it does seem like a lot of those units, they were keeping the Brits and Americans and Canadians together.

• 2:53:48Speaker 01

  Um, obviously for language reasons and all this kind of stuff, similar tactics, that kind of thing. Um, 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 got pulled back and shelved and told to sit on their hands and, you know, that kind of stuff.

• 2:54:10Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting. Very interesting. 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 leaned really into the training. Taking this with a grain of salt because you're the warfighter and Yuri is not, but, um, he thinks it should be Ukrainians out there doing it, not foreign guys. He would like to see the foreign guys doing more of what Overwatch is doing and, and training people and, um, I thought that was an intelligence response.

• 2:54:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, I agree.

• 2:54:51Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:54:52Speaker 01

  You know, I agree and, you know, I, I can't really see the, I can 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.

• 2:55:07Speaker 01

  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, Yuri can teach you how.

• 2:55:18Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:55:19Speaker 01

  We, we have that joke that like, you know, many civilians now are, are actually going out and, and I think doing a great thing and trying to learn how to defend their household or, 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, and they're spending a lot of money on a lot of classes to learn these techniques and these tactics. It's like Yuri could teach you. After, you know, especially like, you know, advanced infantry type tactics and all that kind of stuff. I mean, he's translating everything for me and Tommy and Zach and Rob and, you know, I mean, you could throw him on a, on a marine recon team and he'd be, he'd be just fine.

• 2:56:01Speaker 01

  As far as tactics go, because he's, uh, you know, he's been exposed to a lot of it since, since February and, and, you know, I think that's the key. And, 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, you know, 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

• 2:56:41Speaker 01

  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. 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.

• 2:57:20Speaker 01

  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. And even if it's something as simple as here's a curriculum and here's a couple of guys to run it, you know? 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. Cause how you've always done it's not working. Like you're not winning this war right now. You're not.

• 2:58:04Speaker 01

  And to say you are and to have all these cool little videos on social media and on all these Ukrainian government and, and, and all these chat.

• 2:58:15Shawn Ryan?

  It's propaganda.

• 2:58:16Speaker 01

  It's propaganda, right? We're, we're talking about, like, I've been there, I've seen it, I've seen these people, I've seen what's happening. And it's like, that's not real. What's happening in your country is real and you need to, you need to fix it. Like the winter is coming, that adds a whole new dynamic, right? To, to how this thing's 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 there'll be more artillery and there'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.

• 2:58:50Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think?

• 2:58:53Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think Russia's gonna tone it up a notch when winter comes?

• 2:58:58Speaker 01

  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 a tactic they've used in every war 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, the Ukrainian military shot down an Iranian drone a few weeks ago. Like a drone, an armed drone. And so you're like, they they have the support they need. They just need to keep going and 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.

• 2:59:40Speaker 01

  But it really does affect them on a huge level. Uh, 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 mean, if I was Russia and I'm playing the bad guy. Look, they're targeting these civilian cities. They have been since the beginning and nothing gets done about it. You know, now, if if if you attack civilian cities and I punch you in the mouth, you're gonna think twice about attacking these civilian cities. It's not happening to them, so they can just do this. And I think Russia's thought right now is.

• 3:00:21Speaker 01

  If they do anything too crazy, like if they do fire, if 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's 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 piss them off.

• 3:01:01Speaker 01

  And again, if 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 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 of my country.

• 3:01:18Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:01:19Speaker 01

  Should be the response. So it's very, very complicated that way.

• 3:01:25Speaker 01

  And if, you know, if Ukraine stays away enough to where it keeps the West happy. That doesn't mean that Russia's not gonna use a tactical nuclear weapon somewhere.

• 3:01:37Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:01:37Speaker 01

  Right?

• 3:01:38Shawn Ryan?

  You know, I've I've.

• 3:01:44Shawn Ryan?

  If Putin was smart, I think he would be making a move this winter. Those pipelines are gone. He's gonna turn the gas off. He said he's gonna turn the gas off. That's gonna create a major energy crisis all throughout Europe and Ukraine.

• 3:02:01Shawn Ryan?

  It would be very smart of him to have a follow-on plan. You know what I'm getting at.

• 3:02:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think no one's, no one's gonna 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 loving the artillery 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, then 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, they're moving back for whatever reason. We talked about that earlier. Is it just

• 3:02:49Speaker 01

  a logistical thing, and they're trying to consolidate to, 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, 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.

• 3:03:26Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:03:26Speaker 01

  And they're, 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.

• 3:03:39Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:03:44Shawn Ryan?

  What's your opinion of Zelensky posing for Vogue?

• 3:03:49Speaker 01

  I think he's just trying to do anything he can to get support for the country.

• 3:03:54Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think that was a good move?

• 3:03:56Speaker 01

  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? 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 Fort Myers, asking people for donations and stuff.

• 3:04:40Speaker 01

  And I mean, it's kind of getting to that point, like you're talking about, right?

• 3:04:44Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:04:44Speaker 01

  That's the equivalent of him posing in vogue.

• 3:04:47Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:04:48Speaker 01

  I don't know the guy. I don't know his politics. I don't care, right? I don't not 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 liked him not leaving the Kiev, right? I liked him staying in there. I liked 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, you know? 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 gonna do this."

• 3:05:32Speaker 01

  And I liked when Zelensky 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...

• 3:05:59Speaker 01

  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.

• 3:06:06Shawn Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 3:06:07Speaker 01

  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 fighting force that can dominate this conflict that I'm in and, and get these people out of my country come September so that on October 10th, the thing that happened this morning doesn't happen.

• 3:06:39Shawn Ryan?

  This morning, seventy five rockets went into civilian villages in Ukraine.

• 3:06:44Speaker 01

  All over Ukraine, yeah.

• 3:06:45Shawn Ryan?

  Is there any, uh, is there a, we got a head count on that?

• 3:06:48Speaker 01

  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.

• 3:06:56Shawn Ryan?

  Lucky you.

• 3:06:59Speaker 01

  So, yeah, that, 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, I think their key is training and I think they need to get the fighting 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?

• 3:07:31Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. I got another question for you and then we'll wrap this up. Coming out of Ukraine, this is just your 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.

• 3:08:02Shawn Ryan?

  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?

• 3:08:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean.

• 3:08:15Shawn Ryan?

  Because it is me.

• 3:08:16Speaker 01

  I was very, I'm very worried because we talk about the money. The sixty billion dollars 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? Right, 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. Oh, you supported them how much? Sixty, sixty billion? That's a sixty billion, right? To me, that's more than a sign of support. That's proxy.

• 3:08:58Speaker 01

  That's us fighting China in a proxy type thing. It's not even about Russia anymore because I think if you worked in 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 a big of a worry as we thought they were. They are on the nuclear side, obviously, because they have that. But from a conventional, you know, ground to air type issue even on the war, they just seem, they're just, it's, it's almost like Keystone Cops type stuff. It's comical, it's ridiculous.

• 3:09:40Speaker 01

  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.

• 3:10:05Speaker 01

  Defense of kinda our beliefs and our values and what we do on a foreign, you know, scale, isn't done by this kind of proxy 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 Jordan, Syria, all this kinda 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 kinda 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.

• 3:10:48Speaker 01

  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 warmonger, I'm not, I'm just saying if we have a problem, let's do it, let's not do it in Ukraine.

• 3:10:59Shawn Ryan?

  Let's address it.

• 3:11:00Speaker 01

  Yes, and let's get it out there in the open. And if it causes some kinda 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. Yeah, but we're putting, we're helping with war on other people. You know, 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. You know, we would never do that. And why are we tolerating that? And why are we participating in that? You know, there, Ukraine's probably gonna have to give up a lot to end this thing. You kinda mentioned that earlier.

• 3:11:44Speaker 01

  That's not for me to say, like, I know there's been a lot of American commentators being like, look, the off ramp is very simple. Give them this, give them that, divide this up, make sure this, they can never join NATO, all this kinda 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, you're Russians now, like, it's not gym 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.

• 3:12:17Speaker 01

  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.

• 3:12:25Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, a lot of people, a lot of people are very concerned that this is gonna spark World War Three.

• 3:12:33Speaker 01

  Well, I think it was about Ukraine and Russia in the beginning, last time we spoke. But again, opportunit- 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 gonna benefit us. You know, even on the way of, well, look, they're giving all their money to these people. That giving away sixty billion dollars weakens our country. Significantly weakens our country. And it will for a couple of generations. You don't just grow sixty billion dollars on a tree.

• 3:13:12Speaker 01

  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?

• 3:13:36Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:13:36Speaker 01

  And then who knows what happens after that, you know, the World War Three thing is interesting.

• 3:13:42Speaker 01

  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, 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, next thing you know, it's World War Two or, 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, you know, that are paid to look at things like this, I hope they're looking.

• 3:14:24Speaker 01

  And I hope they're trying to find, you know, something to put those sparks out rather than fanning the flame.

• 3:14:33Shawn Ryan?

  You know, you're.

• 3:14:37Shawn Ryan?

  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?

• 3:14:53Speaker 01

  In Ukraine? No.

• 3:14:55Shawn Ryan?

  Nothing?

• 3:14:56Speaker 01

  Nothing. No, I mean, I mean, short of Ukraine turning on the United States or something like that, no, which obviously is probably not gonna 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.

• 3:15:19Speaker 01

  You know, those people need help and, you know, the 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 and 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

• 3:16:04Speaker 01

  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...

• 3:16:33Speaker 01

  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 and I'm I'm talking about warfighting 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.

• 3:17:04Speaker 01

  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

• 3:17:32Speaker 01

  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 and look, if these 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 and figure out things that they can do to change to to have some positive effects on their ends 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 duty

• 3:18:14Speaker 01

  Green Beret teams, like army SF 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 warfight. You could have, they could they could take that sixty billion dollars and they could pay American contracting companies full of guys with a ton of GWAT 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 then taking their existing infrastructure and their existing people

• 3:18:58Speaker 01

  from top down and saying, okay, yeah, we're gonna change and we're gonna do it. I don't think they can. I don't think they will. I don't think, you know, Yuri 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 again, 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 we're using can train those men to do that job and we're trying to plug that hole the best we can. I think if

• 3:19:38Speaker 01

  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-shaped and V-shaped ambushes and how to counter ambush and just do basic infantry tactics and and help these guys be able to patrol and this 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. 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.

• 3:20:21Speaker 01

  And I think if Ukraine did that on a larger scale and use 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 in their lawn, and you've probably seen it here as well, right? They have our support.

• 3:20:42Speaker 01

  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 get those people out of your country. And that's it. Yeah. And they need to be, they need to have the men to be able to do that. You know, cause we can't go do that for them, but we can go train them. When are you heading back over? Do you know yet? We don't know, we have to, um, you know, everything's crazy right now. We just, uh, at the moment I'm sitting here, we just got done with the, um. Ukraine trip, the fifth one, um, with the court guys, getting them all going. Um, and then, uh, the hurricane.

• 3:21:27Speaker 01

  So, you know, I'll get home, take my shoes off and then we'll sit down and, uh. 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 kinda have to raise some funds and, and, you know. Get some supplies. I mean, we can't really go there now without taking over. Um, that kind of medical gear. We just, that has to be a thing because. Um. How effective it is when we go over there and do that kind of combat medical training? And then we implement some of the tactic 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.

• 3:22:11Speaker 01

  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, we have, it's just getting, becoming bigger and bigger. Um, 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. Um, and we're building that roster, you know, um. Are you still looking for special operations only? Yep, yeah, um, we will have some stuff in the future. Where we could use some other people in certain support roles. But right now we need, um, kinda that different level of, of, of guys. And we, we have a bunch, we have a bunch from the, from the reconnaissance community, obviously, um.

• 3:22:57Speaker 01

  Some from the army and, um, we. Kind of just got access, I'm very excited about it, to the um a a large amount of SARCs from from that medical community um which I'm excited about. It's about thirty 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 recon marine does with kind of the eighteen delta medical package as well. So they're, you know, they're studs. So having access to to those level of guys is is really good.

• 3:23:39Speaker 01

  You know, they'll tell you they're not as good kind of tactically, um because the medical thing is more their thing, but those guys are red hot and um we're happy to have, you know, those kind of guys as well. But we need, we need more guys for sure.

• 3:23:54Shawn Ryan?

  Well, everything will be linked below. Your your Instagram, your website, where everybody can donate.

• 3:24:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, thank you.

• 3:24:01Shawn Ryan?

  Put a resume in, fill out your contact form.

• 3:24:06Shawn Ryan?

  Once again, taking Ukraine out of it, what are some things on the horizon that you see Overwatch Foundation getting involved in?

• 3:24:13Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, more of the natural disaster stuff. We need to build that out a little more. Obviously, where we're based right now in Chicago is kind of far, 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 and all that kind of stuff, the logistics of that get difficult just having to drive equipment down there, right? Um, so coming up with some of the logistical stuff there to build out what we do on a natural disaster thing to to just be that like faster and more efficient and. Um, that kind of stuff. We anticipate in the future getting to the point where we have some regional locations.

• 3:24:57Speaker 01

  With guys in those regions that can mobilize faster. And if we kind of have a headshed type unit that can make it down there or secondary type unit. To 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 gonna need to be obviously funding for that kind of stuff as well. Um, 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 and execute there. Um, we want to get involved in other places as well where there are crisis type areas like Africa.

• 3:25:41Speaker 01

  Um, South America, we sent a guy to go do kind of to scout out Southeast Asia. Um, specifically Vietnam, just to see if there's. Um, 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.

• 3:26:00Shawn Ryan?

  What are you looking to get involved in in Vietnam?

• 3:26:03Speaker 01

  Um, there's a lot of, I don't want to say too much, but we'll say there's a medical component to it. Um, yeah, I don't want to say too much because it's still very early stages and we're.

• 3:26:18Shawn Ryan?

  Is there something going on there that?

• 3:26:20Speaker 01

  No, nothing to like.

• 3:26:21Shawn Ryan?

  Specifically like a genocide, sex trafficking?

• 3:26:25Speaker 01

  So there's a lot like the tra- the trafficking thing is what we're interested in getting involved in as well. Obviously, from a humanitarian level, it's um, it's disastrous. And I 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, there it's happening to the point where it's like if you can get a hundred and twenty grand for a child age four through eight or whatever, people that 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?

• 3:27:08Speaker 01

  It's just and and 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 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 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. Um, on the police level, it's unions and people working overtime and and not having enough staffing as it is and

• 3:27:52Speaker 01

  and on the federal level, it's just kind of bandwidth with everything else they have going on that. Yeah, they're they're trying, but they don't have, they don't have the ability to

• 3:28:03Speaker 01

  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? Okay. Um, which makes sense. There's no point in going and actually, you know, doing a hit on some child trafficking ring. Then you bring them in and you can't charge them with anything or charges drop or whatever, right? Um, but they struggle

• 3:28:46Speaker 01

  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 um do some stuff with child trafficking and we are looking at ways that maybe we can help.

• 3:29:10Speaker 01

  Build those target packages for them because we have guys that can do that and that will do that.

• 3:29:17Speaker 01

  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 legwork and then that legwork 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 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.

• 3:29:47Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I've been looking to dive into that as well.

• 3:29:51Speaker 01

  And no one's really talking about it.

• 3:29:53Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. It's hard to find the right fit. A lot of people doing a lot of things with nonprofits and the sex trafficking, human trafficking ring, a lot of it's bullshit.

• 3:30:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:30:07Shawn Ryan?

  It's hard to find the good ones.

• 3:30:09Speaker 01

  I mean, there's a lot of good stuff, like for instance, after the fact where

• 3:30:14Speaker 01

  you know, ten 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, 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. Yeah, that's not even needed.

• 3:30:43Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I've found that a lot of the nonprofits in that arena,

• 3:30:50Shawn Ryan?

  their mission statement actually is to just bring 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 a nonprofit that's actually fucking combating sex trafficking, not just telling us. Yeah, the shit's happening. Yeah, no shit, it's happening. Go fucking do something about it.

• 3:31:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're trying to actually. You know, get there and stop it and be a part of the the solution and 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 gonna 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'll send lunch a house for five days kind of deal. So without without blinking an eye and they'll, you know, they're high level professionals. So uh with training to to be able to do that and and build those kind of target packages. So if we have those guys, that's what we're looking to do. So

• 3:31:50Speaker 01

  between some of the other humanitarian stuff in the other countries, obviously in Africa, that happens a lot too. And the the slave stuff over in Africa is big as well. You know, just looking at the stuff where I just I'm getting to the point as I look into this, I really have a thing for people who are being victimized. Yeah. Like just absolutely victimized to where it's out of their control, like the hopelessness that comes out of that in these people, right? And let's say you're thirty three years old and something like that's happening to you and like you have the rest of your life to live. You're probably gonna purposely shorten your life. Yeah. After some of this stuff that's going on out there. And it's like, that's crazy. And and if if

• 3:32:33Speaker 01

  me and my teams can affect that and and and change some of that, then that's what we're looking to do. So the stuff in the other countries and then you know, 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, you know, those guys can bounce straight from Ukraine to come to Florida and not even go home and and and, you know, have a glass of whiskey in between. It just goes to show like we can be anywhere very, very quickly with the guys that we have and they're more than willing to go, you know, Justin.

• 3:33:10Speaker 01

  I told you the story about him last night. He uh recon guy, just savage, the nicest savage guy you'll ever meet in your life. He's incredible. And um last week, I wanted to bring him to the hurricane. I needed to bring him to the hurricane. And he was at home, hundred and four degree fever, lives in Phoenix. He's like, just send me a red eye ticket. I'll be there. And I was like, alright, Justin, calm down, dude, like. Relax, man, right? And uh, 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 warmongering.

• 3:33:51Speaker 01

  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 of this whole Overwatch project that we've kinda stumbled upon and have started to grow, you know, we're 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, Rob went over to Ukraine on the last trip, another recon guy, and he was training the the court guys and and he was working with him and, you know, I check in with him every day. At the beginning, he's like, look, I've kinda been out for a while. I don't know how if I'm gonna be. A lot of the, you know, guys, guys from our kinda backgrounds are very humble about their ability.

• 3:34:36Speaker 01

  And he's no different. And it's like, Rob, you're gonna be fine, man. 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 kinda stuff. And he and he just said, he's like, I I would do this every day. I'm getting so, I'm getting so much out of this. And, you know, and and you just see the lift that give the 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. Yeah. You know, that that used to be a something and then we all get out for whatever reasons, we all get away from from that past life for whatever reason. And to kinda give them that feeling again.

• 3:35:19Speaker 01

  You know, I see that in the guys and that's something I never expected to get out of this. You know, and it's really, really cool cuz 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 gonna get so much out of it more than he, more than he knows.

• 3:35:38Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:35:38Speaker 01

  You know, and so on the ride down or the ride in on the plane or whatever, it's like you're, 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. Uh, you know, our medic and. He came back and it's like, man, I need to find something else for this guy to do cuz 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, um, these guys.

• 3:36:11Shawn Ryan?

  They're getting purpose out of it.

• 3:36:12Speaker 01

  Yes, and they can see that they can really do something, you know, like. You get out and you go work, you get out of the military, you're doing these kinda 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 you just, it's not the same. You get them doing something like this again and it, it goes right back to, to the same feelings that we got from. Doing our job and, and they just, the lift and, and it's, it's really crazy, it's almost like.

• 3:36:45Speaker 01

  If someone asked me like, what does Overwatch do? Yes, we talk about our humanitarian relief and, and all the things we're doing, but I, like, I and our group also affects veterans.

• 3:36:58Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:36:58Speaker 01

  Now, it's kinda weird to say that cuz I never even thought that that would be a thing until I saw it in the guys.

• 3:37:04Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:37:05Speaker 01

  And, and that is what we do, like that, that's part of what we do, it's, it's kinda twofold and, and, and I know there are guys out there that. You know, could really benefit from help from being a part of Overwatch. Um, 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, you know?

• 3:37:32Shawn Ryan?

  Well.

• 3:37:34Shawn Ryan?

  Again, what you're doing is fucking awesome, man. 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 want to end this with something. And I want to 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,

• 3:38:19Shawn Ryan?

  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, I'm not used to, coming from where we've come from, I'm not used to that mentality. Well, what am I gonna, what am I, what can I do about it? And so what I want to say is, you know, and I'm just gonna 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 gonna continue to happen.

• 3:39:02Shawn Ryan?

  Scott Mann, the guy that put together Task Force Pineapple Express, pulling all these interpreters and 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 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.

• 3:39:46Speaker 01

  No, I thank you. I thank you for everything. I know, you know, you and I check in all the time with each other on everything, you know, and, and I appreciate that for sure. And, and that helps me a lot. And, and I tell you every time, like, thank you for everything you've done and you are doing for, for me and, and for, for Overwatch. It's been incredible. And to all the, all the viewers and, 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, to those people that sent one magazine pouch or, 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,

• 3:40:31Speaker 01

  if you sent stuff to us, it's in Ukraine. It's there. All that medical stuff you guys sent, all the, 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, and I couldn't believe it. We don't have a facility right now. We kinda use, we use my Jiu-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. Um, it's just, when I looked at it, I was like, I can't, I can't believe this. And people would ask, like, who is that from? From everybody. You know, so these people, all you guys really, really helped.

• 3:41:16Shawn Ryan?

  Mark, pleasure knowing you, man. I'm sure you'll be back. I know you'll be back.

• 3:41:22Speaker 01

  I'd love to, yeah.

• 3:41:23Shawn Ryan?

  You know, those gummy bears aren't gonna last forever.

• 3:41:25Speaker 01

  I'll 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.

• 3:41:32Shawn Ryan?

  All right, man. Well, best of luck to you.

• 3:41:34Speaker 01

  Yep, thank you, Sean.

• 3:41:36Shawn Ryan?

  Keep it in touch.

• 3:41:36Speaker 01

  Yep, thank you.

• 3:41:47Shawn Ryan?

  Hey everybody, I'm Shawn Ryan. Click here to subscribe to the Shawn Ryan Show YouTube channel for the hottest and most 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.

• 3:42:07Speaker 03

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