September 4, 2023 • 33 mins
Last week, Jim returned to the U.S. after spending nearly two weeks in Ukraine and learning the depths of what the Ukrainian people have endured and how they remain determined to win the war against Russia.
In this Labor Day special, Jim chronicles the personal warmth and steely national resolve of the Ukrainian people, who have suffered immensely but face the future with hope. He also goes into detail about the repulsive war crimes committed by Russian forces in Bucha and beyond. And he also shares some unplanned adventures - from the unexpected difficulty getting into the country to hanging out in an anti-aircraft gun position with a Ukrainian Supreme Court justice.
Do not miss Jim's fascinating, first-hand report. But listener discretion is advised. Some descriptions of the atrocities in Ukraine are a bit graphic.
Please visit our great sponsors:
4Patriot
https://4Patriots.com
Use code MARTINI to get 10% off your purchase.
In this Labor Day special, Jim chronicles the personal warmth and steely national resolve of the Ukrainian people, who have suffered immensely but face the future with hope. He also goes into detail about the repulsive war crimes committed by Russian forces in Bucha and beyond. And he also shares some unplanned adventures - from the unexpected difficulty getting into the country to hanging out in an anti-aircraft gun position with a Ukrainian Supreme Court justice.
Do not miss Jim's fascinating, first-hand report. But listener discretion is advised. Some descriptions of the atrocities in Ukraine are a bit graphic.
Please visit our great sponsors:
4Patriot
https://4Patriots.com
Use code MARTINI to get 10% off your purchase.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:03):
Welcome to the Three Martini Lunch.Grab a stool next to Greg Corumbus of
Radio America and Jim Garritty of NationalReview. Three Martini's coming up. Great
to have you with us for theMonday and yes, the Labor Day edition
of the Three Martini Lunch. Aswe told you on Thursday when Jim returned
from his visit to Ukraine, andremind you again on Friday, this is
(00:24):
a special edition of the Three MartiniLunch. We'll get back to our normal
political fair on Tuesday. Today we'regoing to be looking at the good,
the bad, and the crazy.Jim, let's start with the good and
the good, as I think alot of people would surmise, is the
resilience, the toughness and otherwise goodqualities of the Ukrainian people, who,
(00:44):
of course have been fighting for theirsurvival now for about a year and a
half. First of all, Iwant to point out Greg, I'm well,
I found everything I wrote out thereworthwhile. I've actually strangely been looking
forward to taping this podcast with youbecause our audience is very special. It's
the biggest, but I think it'sthe best out there. I'm sure if
you listening to us to day afterday, I feel a little bit like
(01:04):
we're friends. I feel a littlebit like, even if we've never met,
you've been hearing our voice day afterday, talk to you over the
day's headlines, and I feel likeI want to tell people about this.
And if you're you know, supportiveof us efforts to help Ukraine, if
you're opposed, different good smart peoplecan come to different conclusions about this.
(01:25):
But I just felt like it was, you know, when I had the
opportunity to do this a friend who'sbeen helping run assistance programs out there,
it's like, you really should comeover and see with your own eyes.
I did so, and I'm reallyglad that I did, even though,
as we'll talk a bit later,some parts were really difficult. And I'm
not a military expert, I'm nota geopolitical expert. What I could do
(01:45):
is I could go over and talkto as many Ukrainians as I could,
and I could say, what doyou think Americians should know about your experience
and what's happening here and what's what'scontinuing to happen here? And I got
some just amazing answers. Are theUkrainian people I'm we're just extraordinary, and
you'd meet the most delightful people.A single mom who had been in the
(02:07):
Eastern Provinces not far from Danetsk,little village, who had to flee with
her son, who's sixteen daughters aboutsix. They resettled in Odessa. Oh
wait, a pit bull. I'msorry. She was very quick to emphasize
that. I was like, okay, at least you got a pit bull
to protect herself. And I mether in this kind of a community resource
(02:28):
and education center that they had setup. By this this war is generating
a lot of refugees, and it'ssome of the good portion of the refugees
or children. And as you know, as listeners can imagine, this is
an exceptionally traumatic at you know,and some of these folks have I mean,
one guy in Buchak told me hehad like two hours warning and you
could hear the explosions getting closer,and the soldier comes by and says,
(02:49):
you got to get out now,pack a suitcase and get out of here.
And as he was left, thehouse was burned to the ground.
Apparently the fire department is not farway, but because there was shelling,
the Ukrainian military would not allow thefire department to go out and try to
put out fires. So he cameback to find his entire house destroyed.
These are the kinds of stories thatI was hearing on a regular basis.
(03:13):
And in most of these cases,this is in the early part of the
war. March twenty twenty two,so it's been about a year year and
a half. You know, Iwant to say these like, these people
found ways to smile. These peoplefound maybe they're happy to be alive,
maybe they're happy to be for theloved ones they haven't lost, but they
had, you know, as yousaid, resilience. Like they somehow found
(03:34):
a way to find what is stillgood in life and to find things that
still make life worth while and goon when I think a lot of us
would just want to, you know, break down and cry and curl up
into a ball. Even in wartime, life has to go on, and
so I periodically, would you know, we went down to Odessa, which
is on the Black Sea. It'sa beach resort town. I guess this
(03:58):
is kind of there in Miami.This is there, you know, San
Diego, this is their you know, warm, fun, hot, tropical
city. You know where people liketo jump in the water, and they
were swimming at the beach. Iwould note that there wasn't a single boat
in the water in any direction becausethe Russian Navy is still out there,
Russian submarines are still out there.God knows how many mines are still out
there. And shortly before I arrived, like you know, two three weeks,
(04:20):
they had blown up the poor facilities. They bombed the hell out of
them. Apparently there's one that's stillworking. But yeah, so there was
a much more tense mood and atmospherein Odessa. So you know, what
was the best part of Ukraine.The people. They're just amazing. I've
kept meeting one delightful, warm,charming, welcoming person after another, and
(04:43):
then they would tell me stories outof hell. Then they would tell me
the most horrifying stories about seeing peoplekilled, rapes, tanks firing into buildings,
exsuming bodies, bodies being buried inthe backyards because there was no time
for a proper burial. Really,I'm getting ahead of myself with the bad
stuff. But I guess it's hardto talk about the good without mentioning the
bad that they had endured. Andso, you know, like people,
(05:06):
These people worth helping. Oh mygod, you know, send send them
everything we can spare. I knowthere are certain weapons systems were running low
on, and I think it's perfectlylegitimate and reasonable for the United States government
to say, hey, we're runninglow on this particular kind of know,
whether it's javelins or stingers or stufflike that, we need to have set
aside. If you know, Godforbid, China decides to invade Taiwan.
(05:28):
But by and large, I mean, we still have, you know,
warehouses full of tanks. We stillhave warehouses full of shelves, We have
all kinds of stuff. We we'renot using most of the ZEV sixteen's we
can spare quite a bit. Andin the hands of Ukrainians it would do
a lot of good to help themdefend their countries. So, you know,
these are exceptional people. And I'llbe honest. Since I got back,
I've been thinking I want to goback someday. I don't know when,
(05:49):
probably not before next year, althoughif they, if they manage to
break through, I will get there. For one, as one Ukrainian member
of Parliament put at the Bikini BeachParty in Crimea, they and by the
way. They're absolutely convinced it's goingto happen someday. But they also have
no illusions. There was one guywho I talked to who runs kind of
(06:09):
a civilian defense training them. Thiswas up in Covil, near the border
with Belarus, and he said,you think it's going to take three or
four years? Is his gut assessment, based on how long the world wars
have lasted, and based on howpast wars have lasted, just the scale
of it that you don't see themand particularly quickly. So we may be
in for a long, hard sloghere. But they have remarkable confidence and
(06:30):
determination, and I think they willfight. I don't know if Ukrainian Ukrainatian
people will win. I do knowthey will never quit. And so anybody
who thinks, oh, you know, if we cut off Aid, well
they'll they'll be forced to go tothe negotiating table. I don't count on
that. These people have seen theRussians rape their grandmothers. These people have
seen the Russians rape their grandchildren.They are not interested in negotiating a peace
(06:53):
treaty and certainly not interested in anydeal that requires them to give up territory
in exchange for promises of better behaviorfrom flat of Yeah, the resolve of
the Ukrainian people has been incredible sinceday one. I mean at one point
they were literally handing out weapons tojust civilians coming to get them in the
early stages of the war. Andso their resolve is amazing. You mentioned
what they've been through in this war. And the Ukraine, of course,
(07:15):
does not have an easy history.They were i mean go back far enough.
They were conquered by the Mongols,they lived in our Soviet domination World
War two. Of course it wasa massive problem. Stalin starved a bunch
of them to death. So thesepeople are are used to in their history
and their lineage of dealing with difficult, difficult things. And so not to
say that other countries don't have asteely resolve, but it's like these people
(07:35):
are used to dealing with difficulty.Not that they want to be dealing with
this, but they know what ittakes to endure. I guess that's what
I'm saying. It is indisputably puttingin. The Russians bid off a lot
more than they could chew. Therewere, you know, obviously various claims
where the Russians expected to be greetedas liberators, to use a rather infamous
(07:57):
term from the US invasion of Iraq. So in the museum that was previously
the Ukrainian Music National Museum of WorldWar Two, I think the Second World
War is how they call them.They have an exhibit that recreates the sellers
of people in these suburbs out ofKiev that we're fighting in late February and
into March twenty twenty two, anda lot of these places were occupied for
(08:18):
a month, maybe a little morethan a month. And basically these are
civilians, people who could not getout, hiding in their basements in darkness
most of the time, hoping theUkraine, the Russians invading don't find them.
Apparently in this area there were quitea few Chechen troops. Chechnya is
currently ruled by a warlord who isloyal to Putin, and there were some
(08:39):
of these places that there are peoplerecorded it on their cell phones of the
Chechen soldiers finding them and coming in. And the good news is they didn't
go in and kill all of them. I mean, they recognize these were
civilians, but the Chechens then wouldgo in and say, oh, let
me hold your child. With gunsand you know, let me play with
your child. I watched the videoand it's just chilling, because you know,
this guy who's got a giant riflesslung over his back and he's got
(09:01):
this creepy grin is just our THEOwants to play with your child and is
saying, don't worry, we havebeen sent here to rescue you. And
deep down, all of the Ukrainians, we don't need to be rescued.
We were living, our lives wereI can't emphasize that, like this is
a this is just another suburb.This is you know, our architecture is
a little different, but really thisis not all that different from the suburbs
(09:22):
of DC or New York City orwherever. You know, listeners to this
podcast are listening, and it's notall that different from Red Dawn, you
know, Like we remember that imagefrom Red Dawn where a Soviet tank is
going by a McDonald's. There's aMcDonald's, Like I calculated about a mile
from the church that where the churchyardturned into a mass grave. That's where
(09:43):
they were dumping the bodies because therewas no time for proper burials and people
were running into dead bodies in thestreet. So we we Americans have thought
about, God, what it wouldbe like to be invaded by Russians?
What would it be like to haveto defend ourselves in our own hometowns.
The Ukrainians lived it, and they'vebeen through I don't think we're kind of
(10:05):
segueing into our second martini. Bythe way, this is the bad part,
the good part and the bad partblurred together very intensely in my trip
here. That you know, thesepeople have been through hell, and I
think in a kind of experience isindisputably traumatic. I don't think there's anybody
in the country who has not lostsomeone they loved or lost someone who is
(10:26):
important to them. There are someinteresting parallels to nine to eleven. And
when I asked, you know,Ukrainians, you know, I said,
you know, the only thing thatwe in America I've lived through that's kind
of like this is that in almostall of them are Yeah, that's a
pretty gooday of comparison, except picturein nine to eleven across your entire country,
and you have a pretty good ideaof what they went through in late
February twenty twenty two and what they'vebeen living with and tempting to kind of,
(10:50):
you know, soldier on through sincethen for now a year and a
half. We'll be back with theofficial bad Martini in just a second,
all right, Jim, let's talkabout our official bad Martini. Like you
said, the good and the badkind of get woven together, because unless
you understand the bad, understanding andappreciating the resolve and the courage of the
Ukrainian people, it's hard to do. So you had a chance to go
(11:13):
to places where the unimaginable, thehorrific, beyond words in some cases happened,
Buscha especially, But what did yousee, what did you hear?
What exactly did they have to dealwith? Well, I said in the
last segment, you know, sometimespeople would say, I'd ask people if
nine to eleven was an appropriate comparison, and they said, yeah, everybody's
(11:33):
got a story. Just as everyAmerican can tell you where they were when
they heard about the nine to elevenattacks. Everybody I talked to had some
so not just like where I waswhen the war began, but often some
element of like how the war touchedtheir lives. One of our translators said
that his mother's house had been shotThankfully she was not shot, but like
(11:54):
a bullet came through the wall.One of our drivers had to evacuate and
had two cars, and something hitand damaged and destroyed the other car that
he was about to load, sothey rant off. They got away in
the first car. So everybody's gotsome story of a near miss or their
(12:15):
encounter with the violence of the invasion. I knew I was gonna have to
go to Busha. I hated theidea of it the same way probably some
people feel about Auschwitz or maybe visitingGround Zero up in New York, some
site of mass death. You dreadit, but I kind of feel like,
if I gotta see it for myself, I gotta, you know,
hear the stories. So we wentand when late, we went there twice,
(12:37):
which was not the way I wantedthat to go. There is a
church, and I mentioned in thelast segment that because bodies were piling up
very quickly and there was no timefor proper burials, like some people were
burying bodies in their backyards because that'syou know, you don't want to leave
the body. There were some bodiesthat were left out in the open.
By the way, this segment listenershould come with a viewer listener warning,
(13:00):
this is gonna this is gonna getdark. I'm sure there's some people like,
wait, it's going to get dark. It's been dark, I know.
But so we go there the firstday and I get to see the
memorial, and I get to seewhere the bodies were zoomed from, and
you know, it's just an ordinarypatch of dirt in a in a large
churchyard, but you know what happenedthere, and there's kind of this maybe
(13:20):
it's psychosomatical, like there's this mood, there's this energy, there's this feeling
there. I don't know if Inecessarily characterize it as religious, but just
kind of this sense of you canalmost feel it in your bones that something
terrible has happened here. And Ithought I was done, but my traveling
companion, who is a bright andwise man, said, now you really
got to see inside the church.I was like, okay, let's go.
(13:43):
So we go back the next dayand inside the church they have probably
about I'm gonna say, forty orfifty large photographs of what life was like
during the occupation, a lot ofpictures of dead bodies, a lot of
pictures of decom posing bodies and picturesof the exhuming of the bodies. And
(14:05):
it was a French team that wasdoing kind of the forensic investigation to build
the case for a war crimes tribunalat some point and I gasped this,
these these images are horrible. Thereis a real taboo in Western media about
showing pictures of dead bodies. Understandably, I think, you know, nobody
wants it to be exploitative or somethinglike that. There's also a real taboo
(14:28):
on showing pictures of dead bodies whereyou can see the face. This was
full direct, this was there.There were some where you couldn't recognize.
It was not easy to recognize thiswas a human being. And got to
see all of that. And there'sa old woman who works at the church
who let us in. Her namewas Tatiana, and she described that her
(14:50):
god daughter had been in the Buchaarea during the occupation. She had gone
somewhere, I think, to tryto find food for the other people who
were hiding in the basement with her. The Russians let her pass to checkpoint
to go to someplace that she couldget water, and she counted in a
one kilometer or I guess, youknow, if only about a half mile
(15:11):
span, she saw twenty four deadbodies out in the street where people had
been shot, some of them hadbeen bound and again last trigger warning folks
where some of them apparently the dogshad had eaten their faces, chewed off
their faces. This is not mynormal day at work. This is not
the stuff I usually deal with.And it's I'm not gonna you know,
like if you're if you're having ahard time here in this now listeners,
(15:33):
it's worse when it's coming straight fromsomebody who's who's witnessed at all. Then
I spoke to a guy who hadthe nickname Colombo, who just had this
remarkable story. He'd been there thewhole time. He had been a soldier
in the state what was then theSoviet Army, and he had his old
Soviet ID, so I guess hewas able to kind of, you know,
like get past the checkpoints during theoccupation. They treated him as if
(15:54):
he was one of their old buddies. He did not like being treated by
one of their old buddies, Butthis is what you had to do to
go and get food and get waterand to help people. And he told
me a lot of stories about peoplegoing missing and then finding the bodies a
month later, removing bodies from vehicleswhere they'd been shot. He showed me
(16:14):
a bus that had a large redcross sign in it, and we zoomed
in on the photo and counted morethan twenty bullet holes in the front,
done by the Russians. So ifyou're getting I know this is not usual
three Martini Lunch podcast material. Andif this episode upsets you listeners, I'm
sorry. It's not really really wantedto do. But I also feel like
the world's got to know the world'sgot to hear about this. The world's
(16:37):
got to hear it from the peoplewho lived through it. And then a
kind of the other consequence of this, and I think something that maybe this
is a testament to the Ukrainian's courage, and we could talk about in the
Good Martini. But I went upto a town called Koval, As I
mentioned, it's not far from theBelarussian border. They've had air alerts.
In fact, my first air alertwas air raid alert was when I was
there, talk and spoke to themayor. Good guy, just you know
(17:00):
what, Steely will a guy who'sbeen through a lot, and he said
that, you know, Coval,which is a test this small city,
like seventy seven thousand people. Ilooked it up like Oshkosh, Wisconsin.
It's probably a good comparison. Youknow, they have buried forty seven men
who have served in the Ukrainian militarysince the start of the war. That's
a lot. You run those numbers, like, you know, most cities
(17:21):
don't have a lot of casualties fromIraq, a lot of casualties from Afghanistan.
Forty seven now, so okay.A handful of those date back to
the occupation of Crimea and the attackson eastern Ukraine, but most of them
are in the past year and ahalf and there's going to be more.
This is, you know, reallyhard fighting at the front these past couple
(17:44):
of days. I feel confident thatthe Ukrainians are fighting valiantly and well,
and as of this recording, itsounds like they're advancing, but it is
coming at an extraordinary cost. AndI kind of wonder what Ukrainian society is
going to be like after they've beenthrough probably some think akin to their Vietnam
experience or maybe even their career orWorld War two experience. Something that has
really had. There are just goingto be fewer people around because of both
(18:10):
the fighting at the front and theongoing Russian air attacks on civilians. Yeah,
like you said, it's it's grim, it's it's hard to hear,
but it's important to hear because ifyou don't know what's happening, it's hard
to have a full appreciation for thelarger issues. So I know that was
difficult to see and know it's difficultto talk about, but I think our
listeners will appreciate understanding better than theydid when this podcast started. Exactly what
(18:34):
the Ukrainian people have been through,all right, Jim, let's move to
our Crazy Martini a little bit onthe lighter side in some ways as it
relates to your visit to Ukraine,but just kind of some oddball moments,
things you don't expect to see,like grandmas and Supreme Court justices manning machine
guns and stuff. What's going on? All right? So yeah, like,
(18:56):
yeah, I think I think asdepressing as the last segment was,
my traveling companion James and I fora while we kind of remark we just
never knew what was going to beAround every corner, there are a lot
of surreal moments, one of whichwas meeting a Supreme Court justice of Ukraine.
Now I should point out that theyhave like one hundred and sixty of
them, and they work in variouscommittees and stuff like that, so it's
(19:18):
not quite as rare as as itis here in the United States. But
still a one hundred and sixty isn'ta lot. When the Russians advanced towards
Kiev, he and a group ofother judges and lawyers and people who worked
in the Supreme Court basically grabbed myunderstanding was Ak forty sevens or whatever the
Kalishnikov rifles that were available there andran off to try to fight off the
Russians. By the way, theRussians got not they didn't get to the
(19:41):
downtown, but we were trying tocalculate it, and they may have gotten
past the location of where the USembassy is that far into the city.
Not tanks, not not armored vehicles, but individual fighters. I kind of
got into this overpass that we passedon our way out of the city.
As I mentioned, Kiev would bevery tough to conquer and ocupy. It's
a really big city. But theRussians did get pretty you know, scarily
(20:03):
close to the heart of the city, and then shortly thereafter they're like,
okay, you know, we needto do this. And basically going back
to twenty fourteen, and I kindof emphasize enough how many of the how
much of the Ukrainians kept saying,this war did not begin in February twenty
twenty two. It began in twentyfourteen with the occupation and the annexation of
Crimea. You and the West juststopped paying attention to it after that.
We've been fighting the Russians in allkinds of you know, hit and run
(20:26):
attacks and kind of skirmishes over inthe Dawn Boss and those eastern border regions
for a very long time. Butanyway, like they needed all kinds of
volunteers to do all kinds of defensethings in this I was invited to go
up to this rooftop and I said, don't tell anybody where this rooftop is.
And do they have they have ananti drone anti aircraft station. The
(20:47):
weapons they have would not be capableof shooting down planes unless it was flying
like incredibly low. And it soundslike you don't really get that many plane
based attacks in Kiev anymore, whichI guess is good, which I think
is pretty good news. You getdrone attacks, including as they called it,
shib Iranian made drone, and theseguys matting this point, they got
(21:07):
based little last weapons they could findin the Ukrainian arsenal. They had two
machine guns. One was made innineteen forty four. I cannot emphasize it.
I put up some pictures on theJolt about this, like it is
about as old a gun as youcould imagine still works. There's water around
the barrel, I said, waterin the barrel, and obviously there's not
water in the barrel, but there'swater around the barrel to keep it cool.
(21:27):
So when you move this machine gun, and yes they had me,
you know, waving it around,but it was not I was not allowed
to fire it. And you know, you hear this sloshing sound as you
moved the machine and I'm like,wow, that's really weird. I can't
hear the sound. And one ofthe guys they're like, yeah, we
also have a pool up here.They do not have a pool up there,
by the way, but this well, it was very strange. It
was kind of like you could seethis space would be great for a rooftop
(21:48):
party and in the middle of summeror something like that, and it was
it was I was visiting in themiddle of the day. They don't really
get drown attacks during the day.It's pretty much at night. So there's
this group of guys there probably Idon't know eight nine, ten and a
couple of them on duty at anyparticular time. And it was kind of
very lighthearted. They were, theywere you know, they had me put
on the helmet, they had meput on the bulletproof vest. I look
(22:11):
ridiculous. I looked like the NewCaucus in a tank, do not you
know, dude, I wonder tothink that I was out there playing Rambo
or playing war hero. I knowit was kind of I am. I
am a fish out of water inthose circumstances. But I gave them a
really good laugh that day. Iguess that's that's that's that was my contribution
to the war effort. And sothe other gun they had, the new
gun was made in Czechoslovakia in nineteensixty four, So they got one gun
(22:33):
that goes back to Franklin Roosevelt andthe other one goes back to the beginning
of Lynda Johnson's presidency. They alsohave rifles. They have a they kept
they've kept saying heat vision. Ithink they mean infrared or infra red vision,
a laser pointer. They have certainequipment and there are six of these
stations around the city, and Iguess they have a truck mounted one.
And I guess the ideas if youif you get one of these guns and
you pointed in the right direction asthe Sahib drone is moving, it moves
(22:56):
about sixty sixty five miles an hour, and it's flying through the sky,
you can hit it. You canshoot it down and that will prevent the
drone from doing damage. And alot of these drones are sent as kind
of like these almost kama kaze.You send them in and they blow something
up. Now, I'm not gonnaexaggerate because somebody asked me, you know,
do you do you believe them whenthey tell you they shot down five
so far over the course of thewar. From the way they said it,
(23:18):
they sheepishly admitted they had only shotdown five. So if they were
exactly if you're gonna make up astory to tell an American journalist, I
think it's make up a better one. I think there was not a why
you'd want to say you'd shot downmore than five, and none of the
guys who had were there that dayTed managed to shoot one down. I
was trying to explain who mcguiver wasto these, to say that, like,
you guys have had to mcgiver yourway and jury rig and invent all
(23:41):
kinds of solutions with the with withthe equipment that you have, and it's
not perfect and it's not built forthat, but you've just had to improvise
and put it together as best youcan. So that was an extraordinary afternoon.
Then later in Odessa, we werevisiting this center for volunteers who are
helping the war effort. Mostly they'remaking comic netting. They kept calling them
(24:02):
masked nets was their translation to English, which I thought was kind of cute.
But it's mostly you know, awhole bunch of grandmothers, babushkas,
you know, in the language.And so the day I was visiting,
they clearly coordinated. They wanted meto see this. The members of the
rush of them, sorry of theUkrainian military, who were carrying and showing
off these electronic anti drone rifles,and they didn't shoot projectiles. They shoot
(24:26):
electronic signals and I guess that disruptsthe signal between the drone controller and the
drone itself. And this is onlyfor surveillance drones. The Rush has got
all kinds of surveillance drones that theyhave to try to get a better look
at the battlefield and do reconnaissance andstuff like that. And I guess if
you aim this rifle at the rightplace at the right time, the drone
just falls to the ground, whichis one good because now they can't,
(24:48):
you know, continue to use itfor surveillance, but also like you can
get it, capture it. AndI guess the Ukrainians have ways of seeing.
Okay, what did this drone seeso far? So it's useful for
intelligence gathering. And I put picturesup and I put a link to the
manufacturer. I cannot emphasize enough listeners. This looks like something out of the
space age and it's made out ofplastics, so it's incredibly light. And
for the comic book geeks out there, Rob Liffield would draw this kind of
(25:12):
gun. It's just a very weirdIt's tall and boxy, looks very futuristic
and advanced, and they were showingit off to all the Grandmother volunteers.
So you have all of these babushkasrunning around waving and enjoying these giant space
age looking guns. And there werenumerous times on this trip Greg where I
was like, am I taking LSD? This is so weird? Like am
(25:33):
I dreaming this is? This doesnot make a lot of and would I
would find myself writing today on arooftop with the machine gun dates from nineteen
forty four, with a Ukrainian supremeand I just like, those words don't
make a lot of sense in thatorder, and yet somehow that's what I
was witnessing and experiencing and interviewing thesepeople. So as dark as the last
section was, there were parts ofthis trip that were amazing and enjoyable and
(25:56):
I felt really lucky and blessed.Speaking of lucky and black, like,
you know, getting to talk toRabbi Osman who runs the Broad Sky Synagogue
in Ukraine. He is there.He is the chief Rabbi of Ukraine.
Now I know there's another guy whoclaims that title, And I don't want
to get into the complicated reasons forall that, but Rabbi Osman is running
(26:17):
relief efforts and helping evacuate people.His organization is doing all kinds of stuff
to help out. And he wasdown in Curson, which is where they
had the near where the damn hadbroken. They had terrible flooding, and
he and his organization were helping evacuatepeople. They came under fire. They're
they're taping a video and you hearthis boom and the camera gets very shaky
(26:37):
and they all kind of duck forcover. Everybody got out, okay,
but you know, obviously that footagewent viral. And he's just this larger
than life figure character. And thefirst question I asked him is like,
so, how are you doing whenyou're intereting people who've been through absolute hell
and back. I kind of wantto see, y'all. I'm gonna ask
you a very open ended question andjust see where your your answers go.
We'll talk about what's on your mind. And I asked, how are you
(27:00):
doing? And he says, Ifeel blessed. And he's not just blessed
because he survived. He said,I'm very thankful to God for putting me
in a situation where I can helpso many people. And I was just
blown away by that, Like,like, if there's anybody on earth who's
got a reason to say this sucks? How could God do this to me?
How could God do this to us? What did we ever do to
deserve this? This is terrible.We're seeing people die every day and he
(27:22):
doesn't. And you talk about literallyjust counting your blessings, talking about what
is good about this situation is well, I can make a great difference now,
and he is. And I justI read that, you know,
as soon as I heard that,I'm like, well, that's that's the
closing point. And I wrote aWashington Post column about Rabbi Asmen. So
so many great people I met outthere. I hope they stay safe.
I hope they do okay, butI know that they're living in a circumstance
(27:44):
of constant serious risk. That's beenthat's stuck with me since I've come back.
Well, Jim, the Morning Joltreports every single day have been riveting.
You're telling it now on the podcastis absolutely spell binding as well.
I've had the chances, you know, to interview veterans, and when they
talk about their battlefield experiences, youcan see that they're back there as they
(28:07):
tell that story. What I've neverdone, though, is talk to them
where it happened while it was stillgoing on, And so to have that
experience is just absolutely powerful. Andif you haven't read all of Jim's morning
jolts on this, please go backand do so. Every time you see
the Morning Jolt on the National Reviewdot com homepage, just click on that
and we'll give you the whole chronologicalor reverse chronological order of the jolts so
(28:30):
you can catch up. And there'sthere's more crazy stories. You mentioned racing
to get to a hotel before thenationwide midnight to five am curfew, which
I assume is the first time youwere racing to beat a curfew since mom
and dad. Garrity, we're layingdown the law. I'm a touch of
New Jersey back in the day.All right, So I've debated whether I
should uh, okay, so listeners, you're going to get a story that
(28:52):
all right, what time for onemore story? And this is, ironically,
you know, one of the mostchallenging moments of the journey. So
listeners, I'm not gonna lie likeI went back and forth. Oh my
god, do I want to goover there, is it's safe. My
traveling companion James was like, youknow, you're not going to be dodging
snipers. We're going to be stayingin the western part of the country.
You've really gotten He's not no riskbecause you're gonna be under risk of air
alerts and stuff like that. Butyou're gonna be fine and this trip is
(29:15):
definitely worth it. So he andseveral friends picked me up at the airport
in Krakau, Poland. We goto check out the airport, these very
small airport that has basically turned intothe main logistics space for NATO shipping materials
to the Ukrainians. Let me driveto the border and there's an incredibly long
wait at the border. I'm justkind of shocked. People have said there
(29:36):
have been times it's taking like thirteenhours to get to get from one side
of the border to the other.We get through the Polish side, okay,
and there's a friend of my travelingcompanions who's been his driver the whole
time. British guy, really goodguy. We get there, they show
your passports, he has to showthe car registration, all kinds of stuff.
Well, apparently our driver has anunpaid speeding ticket from the last time
(29:56):
he was in Ukraine. Now,in a lot of countries, you'd be
like, okay, you know,you pay the fine, you pay some
sort of delayed payment fee, andthen they send you on your way.
And I know a lot of peopleand a lot of listeners have heard about
the Ukraine having this reputation for beingnotoriously corrupt. Well, I can't say
Zelinsky's fixed it, but I cansay that since Zelinskiy enacted all kinds of
reforms and efforts to crack down oncorruption, everybody's paranoid about getting caught.
(30:22):
It doesn't mean necessarily, I don'tsay this is going I'm saying nobody wants
to get caught it. So Miketraveling companions are like, don't joke about
driving, don't you know, don'tdon't do anything. I'm like, okay.
And it turns out because of thisthat yes, he can pay the
speeding ticket and have this resolved insix to eight weeks. Until then he's
not allowed into the country. He'sour driver. It's a stick it's stick
shift. I don't know how todrive. That They were driven in Ukraine
(30:44):
before countries at war don't know whereI'm going, Like there's a million reasons
where week we couldn't have anybody elseto do it, and I kind of
started panicking, like I've gotten toUkraine and now I can't get any further.
And by the way, like Levovis probably like an hour's drive from
the border post, but it wasnot nearby. It's not like we could
walk there. We did not ahitch hike per se. A large bus
came by and border guards basically asked, could you take these guys till above,
(31:07):
and they should sure, And sowe did eventually get our passports back
and go in there and ended upin there. But as I mentioned,
as you mentioned that there's a midnightto five am curfew in the country in
which you cannot be on the street. These are the hours that the Ukrainian
military uses to move stuff around,and it's just an easier way to make
sure there's no civilian on the streetsto say, hey, I just saw
a column of tanks going down suchand such street and putting on social media
(31:27):
or something like that. So ifyou're in Ukraine, you're not supposed to
be on the streets from twelve tofive. I was told that, as
you know, non citizen Westerners,we would probably just get yelled at by
the police and told to get youknow, to get home. But if
you're Ukrainian and you're caught during outon the street in these hours, you
could get up in serious trouble.The expectation is that you're a saboteur.
There's something you're up to no good. So we've got this cli know,
(31:48):
ticking clock of a deadline. Wegot to the hotel after you know,
we got got to the center ofthe city, then got another car to
take us to to where the hotelis. Got there at eleven forty.
My traveling companion is, you know, my favorite restaurant is around the corner.
Let's see if we can get takeout like this. This is as
close as my life has gotten tobe twenty four Greg, there's this ticking
(32:08):
clock. The restaurant was closed.We got back to the hotel in fine.
Everything worked out fine, but thatyou know, I was a moment
of like, I've gotten to Ukraine, I've gotten like ten feet into the
country and I'm not gonna be ableto go any further because we have an
issue with our car. Everything workedout fine, many thanks to my traveling
companion James, who did an amazingimprovisation with all kinds of logistical issues.
(32:30):
Uh, this, this trip andthis reporting would not have occurred without him,
and he's an exceptional guy who's doinghis part to try to, you
know, help out people there.But yeah, crazy stories, crazy places,
and that's that's what I did forthe past few weeks. You had
Jack Byer lines in your head.I know it, maybe not out loud.
I don't have time to explain.We are running out time, bus
(32:50):
driver. Yes, oh man,Well, we are incredibly glad that you're
home safely. I know your familyis incredibly grateful as well. Thank you
for sharing what's happening there and yourown personal experiences with your readers and of
course here on the podcast, andso so Jim, I know that,
as you've already said, in someways, you're excited to get back to
our normal fair, which we willdo tomorrow. So see then, see
(33:14):
tomorrow. Jim Garretty, Nashtional Review. I'm Greig Corumbus of Radio America.
Thanks so much for being with ustoday. Please subscribe to the podcast if
you don't already, and encourage somefriends to do so as well. We'd
love to have them with us.Also, thank you for your five star
ratings and your kind reviews. Pleasekeep those coming. Get us on your
home devices. All you have tosay is play Three Martini Lunch podcast.
Follow us on X He's at JimGarretty, I'm at Dateline, Underscore DC.
(33:36):
Have a great Monday, and joinus again on Tuesday for the next
Three Martini Lunch
Welcome to the Three Martini Lunch.Grab a stool next to Greg Corumbus of
Radio America and Jim Garritty of NationalReview. Three Martini's coming up. Great
to have you with us for theMonday and yes, the Labor Day edition
of the Three Martini Lunch. Aswe told you on Thursday when Jim returned
from his visit to Ukraine, andremind you again on Friday, this is
(00:24):
a special edition of the Three MartiniLunch. We'll get back to our normal
political fair on Tuesday. Today we'regoing to be looking at the good,
the bad, and the crazy.Jim, let's start with the good and
the good, as I think alot of people would surmise, is the
resilience, the toughness and otherwise goodqualities of the Ukrainian people, who,
(00:44):
of course have been fighting for theirsurvival now for about a year and a
half. First of all, Iwant to point out Greg, I'm well,
I found everything I wrote out thereworthwhile. I've actually strangely been looking
forward to taping this podcast with youbecause our audience is very special. It's
the biggest, but I think it'sthe best out there. I'm sure if
you listening to us to day afterday, I feel a little bit like
(01:04):
we're friends. I feel a littlebit like, even if we've never met,
you've been hearing our voice day afterday, talk to you over the
day's headlines, and I feel likeI want to tell people about this.
And if you're you know, supportiveof us efforts to help Ukraine, if
you're opposed, different good smart peoplecan come to different conclusions about this.
(01:25):
But I just felt like it was, you know, when I had the
opportunity to do this a friend who'sbeen helping run assistance programs out there,
it's like, you really should comeover and see with your own eyes.
I did so, and I'm reallyglad that I did, even though,
as we'll talk a bit later,some parts were really difficult. And I'm
not a military expert, I'm nota geopolitical expert. What I could do
(01:45):
is I could go over and talkto as many Ukrainians as I could,
and I could say, what doyou think Americians should know about your experience
and what's happening here and what's what'scontinuing to happen here? And I got
some just amazing answers. Are theUkrainian people I'm we're just extraordinary, and
you'd meet the most delightful people.A single mom who had been in the
(02:07):
Eastern Provinces not far from Danetsk,little village, who had to flee with
her son, who's sixteen daughters aboutsix. They resettled in Odessa. Oh
wait, a pit bull. I'msorry. She was very quick to emphasize
that. I was like, okay, at least you got a pit bull
to protect herself. And I mether in this kind of a community resource
(02:28):
and education center that they had setup. By this this war is generating
a lot of refugees, and it'ssome of the good portion of the refugees
or children. And as you know, as listeners can imagine, this is
an exceptionally traumatic at you know,and some of these folks have I mean,
one guy in Buchak told me hehad like two hours warning and you
could hear the explosions getting closer,and the soldier comes by and says,
(02:49):
you got to get out now,pack a suitcase and get out of here.
And as he was left, thehouse was burned to the ground.
Apparently the fire department is not farway, but because there was shelling,
the Ukrainian military would not allow thefire department to go out and try to
put out fires. So he cameback to find his entire house destroyed.
These are the kinds of stories thatI was hearing on a regular basis.
(03:13):
And in most of these cases,this is in the early part of the
war. March twenty twenty two,so it's been about a year year and
a half. You know, Iwant to say these like, these people
found ways to smile. These peoplefound maybe they're happy to be alive,
maybe they're happy to be for theloved ones they haven't lost, but they
had, you know, as yousaid, resilience. Like they somehow found
(03:34):
a way to find what is stillgood in life and to find things that
still make life worth while and goon when I think a lot of us
would just want to, you know, break down and cry and curl up
into a ball. Even in wartime, life has to go on, and
so I periodically, would you know, we went down to Odessa, which
is on the Black Sea. It'sa beach resort town. I guess this
(03:58):
is kind of there in Miami.This is there, you know, San
Diego, this is their you know, warm, fun, hot, tropical
city. You know where people liketo jump in the water, and they
were swimming at the beach. Iwould note that there wasn't a single boat
in the water in any direction becausethe Russian Navy is still out there,
Russian submarines are still out there.God knows how many mines are still out
there. And shortly before I arrived, like you know, two three weeks,
(04:20):
they had blown up the poor facilities. They bombed the hell out of
them. Apparently there's one that's stillworking. But yeah, so there was
a much more tense mood and atmospherein Odessa. So you know, what
was the best part of Ukraine.The people. They're just amazing. I've
kept meeting one delightful, warm,charming, welcoming person after another, and
(04:43):
then they would tell me stories outof hell. Then they would tell me
the most horrifying stories about seeing peoplekilled, rapes, tanks firing into buildings,
exsuming bodies, bodies being buried inthe backyards because there was no time
for a proper burial. Really,I'm getting ahead of myself with the bad
stuff. But I guess it's hardto talk about the good without mentioning the
bad that they had endured. Andso, you know, like people,
(05:06):
These people worth helping. Oh mygod, you know, send send them
everything we can spare. I knowthere are certain weapons systems were running low
on, and I think it's perfectlylegitimate and reasonable for the United States government
to say, hey, we're runninglow on this particular kind of know,
whether it's javelins or stingers or stufflike that, we need to have set
aside. If you know, Godforbid, China decides to invade Taiwan.
(05:28):
But by and large, I mean, we still have, you know,
warehouses full of tanks. We stillhave warehouses full of shelves, We have
all kinds of stuff. We we'renot using most of the ZEV sixteen's we
can spare quite a bit. Andin the hands of Ukrainians it would do
a lot of good to help themdefend their countries. So, you know,
these are exceptional people. And I'llbe honest. Since I got back,
I've been thinking I want to goback someday. I don't know when,
(05:49):
probably not before next year, althoughif they, if they manage to
break through, I will get there. For one, as one Ukrainian member
of Parliament put at the Bikini BeachParty in Crimea, they and by the
way. They're absolutely convinced it's goingto happen someday. But they also have
no illusions. There was one guywho I talked to who runs kind of
(06:09):
a civilian defense training them. Thiswas up in Covil, near the border
with Belarus, and he said,you think it's going to take three or
four years? Is his gut assessment, based on how long the world wars
have lasted, and based on howpast wars have lasted, just the scale
of it that you don't see themand particularly quickly. So we may be
in for a long, hard sloghere. But they have remarkable confidence and
(06:30):
determination, and I think they willfight. I don't know if Ukrainian Ukrainatian
people will win. I do knowthey will never quit. And so anybody
who thinks, oh, you know, if we cut off Aid, well
they'll they'll be forced to go tothe negotiating table. I don't count on
that. These people have seen theRussians rape their grandmothers. These people have
seen the Russians rape their grandchildren.They are not interested in negotiating a peace
(06:53):
treaty and certainly not interested in anydeal that requires them to give up territory
in exchange for promises of better behaviorfrom flat of Yeah, the resolve of
the Ukrainian people has been incredible sinceday one. I mean at one point
they were literally handing out weapons tojust civilians coming to get them in the
early stages of the war. Andso their resolve is amazing. You mentioned
what they've been through in this war. And the Ukraine, of course,
(07:15):
does not have an easy history.They were i mean go back far enough.
They were conquered by the Mongols,they lived in our Soviet domination World
War two. Of course it wasa massive problem. Stalin starved a bunch
of them to death. So thesepeople are are used to in their history
and their lineage of dealing with difficult, difficult things. And so not to
say that other countries don't have asteely resolve, but it's like these people
(07:35):
are used to dealing with difficulty.Not that they want to be dealing with
this, but they know what ittakes to endure. I guess that's what
I'm saying. It is indisputably puttingin. The Russians bid off a lot
more than they could chew. Therewere, you know, obviously various claims
where the Russians expected to be greetedas liberators, to use a rather infamous
(07:57):
term from the US invasion of Iraq. So in the museum that was previously
the Ukrainian Music National Museum of WorldWar Two, I think the Second World
War is how they call them.They have an exhibit that recreates the sellers
of people in these suburbs out ofKiev that we're fighting in late February and
into March twenty twenty two, anda lot of these places were occupied for
(08:18):
a month, maybe a little morethan a month. And basically these are
civilians, people who could not getout, hiding in their basements in darkness
most of the time, hoping theUkraine, the Russians invading don't find them.
Apparently in this area there were quitea few Chechen troops. Chechnya is
currently ruled by a warlord who isloyal to Putin, and there were some
(08:39):
of these places that there are peoplerecorded it on their cell phones of the
Chechen soldiers finding them and coming in. And the good news is they didn't
go in and kill all of them. I mean, they recognize these were
civilians, but the Chechens then wouldgo in and say, oh, let
me hold your child. With gunsand you know, let me play with
your child. I watched the videoand it's just chilling, because you know,
this guy who's got a giant riflesslung over his back and he's got
(09:01):
this creepy grin is just our THEOwants to play with your child and is
saying, don't worry, we havebeen sent here to rescue you. And
deep down, all of the Ukrainians, we don't need to be rescued.
We were living, our lives wereI can't emphasize that, like this is
a this is just another suburb.This is you know, our architecture is
a little different, but really thisis not all that different from the suburbs
(09:22):
of DC or New York City orwherever. You know, listeners to this
podcast are listening, and it's notall that different from Red Dawn, you
know, Like we remember that imagefrom Red Dawn where a Soviet tank is
going by a McDonald's. There's aMcDonald's, Like I calculated about a mile
from the church that where the churchyardturned into a mass grave. That's where
(09:43):
they were dumping the bodies because therewas no time for proper burials and people
were running into dead bodies in thestreet. So we we Americans have thought
about, God, what it wouldbe like to be invaded by Russians?
What would it be like to haveto defend ourselves in our own hometowns.
The Ukrainians lived it, and they'vebeen through I don't think we're kind of
(10:05):
segueing into our second martini. Bythe way, this is the bad part,
the good part and the bad partblurred together very intensely in my trip
here. That you know, thesepeople have been through hell, and I
think in a kind of experience isindisputably traumatic. I don't think there's anybody
in the country who has not lostsomeone they loved or lost someone who is
(10:26):
important to them. There are someinteresting parallels to nine to eleven. And
when I asked, you know,Ukrainians, you know, I said,
you know, the only thing thatwe in America I've lived through that's kind
of like this is that in almostall of them are Yeah, that's a
pretty gooday of comparison, except picturein nine to eleven across your entire country,
and you have a pretty good ideaof what they went through in late
February twenty twenty two and what they'vebeen living with and tempting to kind of,
(10:50):
you know, soldier on through sincethen for now a year and a
half. We'll be back with theofficial bad Martini in just a second,
all right, Jim, let's talkabout our official bad Martini. Like you
said, the good and the badkind of get woven together, because unless
you understand the bad, understanding andappreciating the resolve and the courage of the
Ukrainian people, it's hard to do. So you had a chance to go
(11:13):
to places where the unimaginable, thehorrific, beyond words in some cases happened,
Buscha especially, But what did yousee, what did you hear?
What exactly did they have to dealwith? Well, I said in the
last segment, you know, sometimespeople would say, I'd ask people if
nine to eleven was an appropriate comparison, and they said, yeah, everybody's
(11:33):
got a story. Just as everyAmerican can tell you where they were when
they heard about the nine to elevenattacks. Everybody I talked to had some
so not just like where I waswhen the war began, but often some
element of like how the war touchedtheir lives. One of our translators said
that his mother's house had been shotThankfully she was not shot, but like
(11:54):
a bullet came through the wall.One of our drivers had to evacuate and
had two cars, and something hitand damaged and destroyed the other car that
he was about to load, sothey rant off. They got away in
the first car. So everybody's gotsome story of a near miss or their
(12:15):
encounter with the violence of the invasion. I knew I was gonna have to
go to Busha. I hated theidea of it the same way probably some
people feel about Auschwitz or maybe visitingGround Zero up in New York, some
site of mass death. You dreadit, but I kind of feel like,
if I gotta see it for myself, I gotta, you know,
hear the stories. So we wentand when late, we went there twice,
(12:37):
which was not the way I wantedthat to go. There is a
church, and I mentioned in thelast segment that because bodies were piling up
very quickly and there was no timefor proper burials, like some people were
burying bodies in their backyards because that'syou know, you don't want to leave
the body. There were some bodiesthat were left out in the open.
By the way, this segment listenershould come with a viewer listener warning,
(13:00):
this is gonna this is gonna getdark. I'm sure there's some people like,
wait, it's going to get dark. It's been dark, I know.
But so we go there the firstday and I get to see the
memorial, and I get to seewhere the bodies were zoomed from, and
you know, it's just an ordinarypatch of dirt in a in a large
churchyard, but you know what happenedthere, and there's kind of this maybe
(13:20):
it's psychosomatical, like there's this mood, there's this energy, there's this feeling
there. I don't know if Inecessarily characterize it as religious, but just
kind of this sense of you canalmost feel it in your bones that something
terrible has happened here. And Ithought I was done, but my traveling
companion, who is a bright andwise man, said, now you really
got to see inside the church.I was like, okay, let's go.
(13:43):
So we go back the next dayand inside the church they have probably
about I'm gonna say, forty orfifty large photographs of what life was like
during the occupation, a lot ofpictures of dead bodies, a lot of
pictures of decom posing bodies and picturesof the exhuming of the bodies. And
(14:05):
it was a French team that wasdoing kind of the forensic investigation to build
the case for a war crimes tribunalat some point and I gasped this,
these these images are horrible. Thereis a real taboo in Western media about
showing pictures of dead bodies. Understandably, I think, you know, nobody
wants it to be exploitative or somethinglike that. There's also a real taboo
(14:28):
on showing pictures of dead bodies whereyou can see the face. This was
full direct, this was there.There were some where you couldn't recognize.
It was not easy to recognize thiswas a human being. And got to
see all of that. And there'sa old woman who works at the church
who let us in. Her namewas Tatiana, and she described that her
(14:50):
god daughter had been in the Buchaarea during the occupation. She had gone
somewhere, I think, to tryto find food for the other people who
were hiding in the basement with her. The Russians let her pass to checkpoint
to go to someplace that she couldget water, and she counted in a
one kilometer or I guess, youknow, if only about a half mile
(15:11):
span, she saw twenty four deadbodies out in the street where people had
been shot, some of them hadbeen bound and again last trigger warning folks
where some of them apparently the dogshad had eaten their faces, chewed off
their faces. This is not mynormal day at work. This is not
the stuff I usually deal with.And it's I'm not gonna you know,
like if you're if you're having ahard time here in this now listeners,
(15:33):
it's worse when it's coming straight fromsomebody who's who's witnessed at all. Then
I spoke to a guy who hadthe nickname Colombo, who just had this
remarkable story. He'd been there thewhole time. He had been a soldier
in the state what was then theSoviet Army, and he had his old
Soviet ID, so I guess hewas able to kind of, you know,
like get past the checkpoints during theoccupation. They treated him as if
(15:54):
he was one of their old buddies. He did not like being treated by
one of their old buddies, Butthis is what you had to do to
go and get food and get waterand to help people. And he told
me a lot of stories about peoplegoing missing and then finding the bodies a
month later, removing bodies from vehicleswhere they'd been shot. He showed me
(16:14):
a bus that had a large redcross sign in it, and we zoomed
in on the photo and counted morethan twenty bullet holes in the front,
done by the Russians. So ifyou're getting I know this is not usual
three Martini Lunch podcast material. Andif this episode upsets you listeners, I'm
sorry. It's not really really wantedto do. But I also feel like
the world's got to know the world'sgot to hear about this. The world's
(16:37):
got to hear it from the peoplewho lived through it. And then a
kind of the other consequence of this, and I think something that maybe this
is a testament to the Ukrainian's courage, and we could talk about in the
Good Martini. But I went upto a town called Koval, As I
mentioned, it's not far from theBelarussian border. They've had air alerts.
In fact, my first air alertwas air raid alert was when I was
there, talk and spoke to themayor. Good guy, just you know
(17:00):
what, Steely will a guy who'sbeen through a lot, and he said
that, you know, Coval,which is a test this small city,
like seventy seven thousand people. Ilooked it up like Oshkosh, Wisconsin.
It's probably a good comparison. Youknow, they have buried forty seven men
who have served in the Ukrainian militarysince the start of the war. That's
a lot. You run those numbers, like, you know, most cities
(17:21):
don't have a lot of casualties fromIraq, a lot of casualties from Afghanistan.
Forty seven now, so okay.A handful of those date back to
the occupation of Crimea and the attackson eastern Ukraine, but most of them
are in the past year and ahalf and there's going to be more.
This is, you know, reallyhard fighting at the front these past couple
(17:44):
of days. I feel confident thatthe Ukrainians are fighting valiantly and well,
and as of this recording, itsounds like they're advancing, but it is
coming at an extraordinary cost. AndI kind of wonder what Ukrainian society is
going to be like after they've beenthrough probably some think akin to their Vietnam
experience or maybe even their career orWorld War two experience. Something that has
really had. There are just goingto be fewer people around because of both
(18:10):
the fighting at the front and theongoing Russian air attacks on civilians. Yeah,
like you said, it's it's grim, it's it's hard to hear,
but it's important to hear because ifyou don't know what's happening, it's hard
to have a full appreciation for thelarger issues. So I know that was
difficult to see and know it's difficultto talk about, but I think our
listeners will appreciate understanding better than theydid when this podcast started. Exactly what
(18:34):
the Ukrainian people have been through,all right, Jim, let's move to
our Crazy Martini a little bit onthe lighter side in some ways as it
relates to your visit to Ukraine,but just kind of some oddball moments,
things you don't expect to see,like grandmas and Supreme Court justices manning machine
guns and stuff. What's going on? All right? So yeah, like,
(18:56):
yeah, I think I think asdepressing as the last segment was,
my traveling companion James and I fora while we kind of remark we just
never knew what was going to beAround every corner, there are a lot
of surreal moments, one of whichwas meeting a Supreme Court justice of Ukraine.
Now I should point out that theyhave like one hundred and sixty of
them, and they work in variouscommittees and stuff like that, so it's
(19:18):
not quite as rare as as itis here in the United States. But
still a one hundred and sixty isn'ta lot. When the Russians advanced towards
Kiev, he and a group ofother judges and lawyers and people who worked
in the Supreme Court basically grabbed myunderstanding was Ak forty sevens or whatever the
Kalishnikov rifles that were available there andran off to try to fight off the
Russians. By the way, theRussians got not they didn't get to the
(19:41):
downtown, but we were trying tocalculate it, and they may have gotten
past the location of where the USembassy is that far into the city.
Not tanks, not not armored vehicles, but individual fighters. I kind of
got into this overpass that we passedon our way out of the city.
As I mentioned, Kiev would bevery tough to conquer and ocupy. It's
a really big city. But theRussians did get pretty you know, scarily
(20:03):
close to the heart of the city, and then shortly thereafter they're like,
okay, you know, we needto do this. And basically going back
to twenty fourteen, and I kindof emphasize enough how many of the how
much of the Ukrainians kept saying,this war did not begin in February twenty
twenty two. It began in twentyfourteen with the occupation and the annexation of
Crimea. You and the West juststopped paying attention to it after that.
We've been fighting the Russians in allkinds of you know, hit and run
(20:26):
attacks and kind of skirmishes over inthe Dawn Boss and those eastern border regions
for a very long time. Butanyway, like they needed all kinds of
volunteers to do all kinds of defensethings in this I was invited to go
up to this rooftop and I said, don't tell anybody where this rooftop is.
And do they have they have ananti drone anti aircraft station. The
(20:47):
weapons they have would not be capableof shooting down planes unless it was flying
like incredibly low. And it soundslike you don't really get that many plane
based attacks in Kiev anymore, whichI guess is good, which I think
is pretty good news. You getdrone attacks, including as they called it,
shib Iranian made drone, and theseguys matting this point, they got
(21:07):
based little last weapons they could findin the Ukrainian arsenal. They had two
machine guns. One was made innineteen forty four. I cannot emphasize it.
I put up some pictures on theJolt about this, like it is
about as old a gun as youcould imagine still works. There's water around
the barrel, I said, waterin the barrel, and obviously there's not
water in the barrel, but there'swater around the barrel to keep it cool.
(21:27):
So when you move this machine gun, and yes they had me,
you know, waving it around,but it was not I was not allowed
to fire it. And you know, you hear this sloshing sound as you
moved the machine and I'm like,wow, that's really weird. I can't
hear the sound. And one ofthe guys they're like, yeah, we
also have a pool up here.They do not have a pool up there,
by the way, but this well, it was very strange. It
was kind of like you could seethis space would be great for a rooftop
(21:48):
party and in the middle of summeror something like that, and it was
it was I was visiting in themiddle of the day. They don't really
get drown attacks during the day.It's pretty much at night. So there's
this group of guys there probably Idon't know eight nine, ten and a
couple of them on duty at anyparticular time. And it was kind of
very lighthearted. They were, theywere you know, they had me put
on the helmet, they had meput on the bulletproof vest. I look
(22:11):
ridiculous. I looked like the NewCaucus in a tank, do not you
know, dude, I wonder tothink that I was out there playing Rambo
or playing war hero. I knowit was kind of I am. I
am a fish out of water inthose circumstances. But I gave them a
really good laugh that day. Iguess that's that's that's that was my contribution
to the war effort. And sothe other gun they had, the new
gun was made in Czechoslovakia in nineteensixty four, So they got one gun
(22:33):
that goes back to Franklin Roosevelt andthe other one goes back to the beginning
of Lynda Johnson's presidency. They alsohave rifles. They have a they kept
they've kept saying heat vision. Ithink they mean infrared or infra red vision,
a laser pointer. They have certainequipment and there are six of these
stations around the city, and Iguess they have a truck mounted one.
And I guess the ideas if youif you get one of these guns and
you pointed in the right direction asthe Sahib drone is moving, it moves
(22:56):
about sixty sixty five miles an hour, and it's flying through the sky,
you can hit it. You canshoot it down and that will prevent the
drone from doing damage. And alot of these drones are sent as kind
of like these almost kama kaze.You send them in and they blow something
up. Now, I'm not gonnaexaggerate because somebody asked me, you know,
do you do you believe them whenthey tell you they shot down five
so far over the course of thewar. From the way they said it,
(23:18):
they sheepishly admitted they had only shotdown five. So if they were
exactly if you're gonna make up astory to tell an American journalist, I
think it's make up a better one. I think there was not a why
you'd want to say you'd shot downmore than five, and none of the
guys who had were there that dayTed managed to shoot one down. I
was trying to explain who mcguiver wasto these, to say that, like,
you guys have had to mcgiver yourway and jury rig and invent all
(23:41):
kinds of solutions with the with withthe equipment that you have, and it's
not perfect and it's not built forthat, but you've just had to improvise
and put it together as best youcan. So that was an extraordinary afternoon.
Then later in Odessa, we werevisiting this center for volunteers who are
helping the war effort. Mostly they'remaking comic netting. They kept calling them
(24:02):
masked nets was their translation to English, which I thought was kind of cute.
But it's mostly you know, awhole bunch of grandmothers, babushkas,
you know, in the language.And so the day I was visiting,
they clearly coordinated. They wanted meto see this. The members of the
rush of them, sorry of theUkrainian military, who were carrying and showing
off these electronic anti drone rifles,and they didn't shoot projectiles. They shoot
(24:26):
electronic signals and I guess that disruptsthe signal between the drone controller and the
drone itself. And this is onlyfor surveillance drones. The Rush has got
all kinds of surveillance drones that theyhave to try to get a better look
at the battlefield and do reconnaissance andstuff like that. And I guess if
you aim this rifle at the rightplace at the right time, the drone
just falls to the ground, whichis one good because now they can't,
(24:48):
you know, continue to use itfor surveillance, but also like you can
get it, capture it. AndI guess the Ukrainians have ways of seeing.
Okay, what did this drone seeso far? So it's useful for
intelligence gathering. And I put picturesup and I put a link to the
manufacturer. I cannot emphasize enough listeners. This looks like something out of the
space age and it's made out ofplastics, so it's incredibly light. And
for the comic book geeks out there, Rob Liffield would draw this kind of
(25:12):
gun. It's just a very weirdIt's tall and boxy, looks very futuristic
and advanced, and they were showingit off to all the Grandmother volunteers.
So you have all of these babushkasrunning around waving and enjoying these giant space
age looking guns. And there werenumerous times on this trip Greg where I
was like, am I taking LSD? This is so weird? Like am
(25:33):
I dreaming this is? This doesnot make a lot of and would I
would find myself writing today on arooftop with the machine gun dates from nineteen
forty four, with a Ukrainian supremeand I just like, those words don't
make a lot of sense in thatorder, and yet somehow that's what I
was witnessing and experiencing and interviewing thesepeople. So as dark as the last
section was, there were parts ofthis trip that were amazing and enjoyable and
(25:56):
I felt really lucky and blessed.Speaking of lucky and black, like,
you know, getting to talk toRabbi Osman who runs the Broad Sky Synagogue
in Ukraine. He is there.He is the chief Rabbi of Ukraine.
Now I know there's another guy whoclaims that title, And I don't want
to get into the complicated reasons forall that, but Rabbi Osman is running
(26:17):
relief efforts and helping evacuate people.His organization is doing all kinds of stuff
to help out. And he wasdown in Curson, which is where they
had the near where the damn hadbroken. They had terrible flooding, and
he and his organization were helping evacuatepeople. They came under fire. They're
they're taping a video and you hearthis boom and the camera gets very shaky
(26:37):
and they all kind of duck forcover. Everybody got out, okay,
but you know, obviously that footagewent viral. And he's just this larger
than life figure character. And thefirst question I asked him is like,
so, how are you doing whenyou're intereting people who've been through absolute hell
and back. I kind of wantto see, y'all. I'm gonna ask
you a very open ended question andjust see where your your answers go.
We'll talk about what's on your mind. And I asked, how are you
(27:00):
doing? And he says, Ifeel blessed. And he's not just blessed
because he survived. He said,I'm very thankful to God for putting me
in a situation where I can helpso many people. And I was just
blown away by that, Like,like, if there's anybody on earth who's
got a reason to say this sucks? How could God do this to me?
How could God do this to us? What did we ever do to
deserve this? This is terrible.We're seeing people die every day and he
(27:22):
doesn't. And you talk about literallyjust counting your blessings, talking about what
is good about this situation is well, I can make a great difference now,
and he is. And I justI read that, you know,
as soon as I heard that,I'm like, well, that's that's the
closing point. And I wrote aWashington Post column about Rabbi Asmen. So
so many great people I met outthere. I hope they stay safe.
I hope they do okay, butI know that they're living in a circumstance
(27:44):
of constant serious risk. That's beenthat's stuck with me since I've come back.
Well, Jim, the Morning Joltreports every single day have been riveting.
You're telling it now on the podcastis absolutely spell binding as well.
I've had the chances, you know, to interview veterans, and when they
talk about their battlefield experiences, youcan see that they're back there as they
(28:07):
tell that story. What I've neverdone, though, is talk to them
where it happened while it was stillgoing on, And so to have that
experience is just absolutely powerful. Andif you haven't read all of Jim's morning
jolts on this, please go backand do so. Every time you see
the Morning Jolt on the National Reviewdot com homepage, just click on that
and we'll give you the whole chronologicalor reverse chronological order of the jolts so
(28:30):
you can catch up. And there'sthere's more crazy stories. You mentioned racing
to get to a hotel before thenationwide midnight to five am curfew, which
I assume is the first time youwere racing to beat a curfew since mom
and dad. Garrity, we're layingdown the law. I'm a touch of
New Jersey back in the day.All right, So I've debated whether I
should uh, okay, so listeners, you're going to get a story that
(28:52):
all right, what time for onemore story? And this is, ironically,
you know, one of the mostchallenging moments of the journey. So
listeners, I'm not gonna lie likeI went back and forth. Oh my
god, do I want to goover there, is it's safe. My
traveling companion James was like, youknow, you're not going to be dodging
snipers. We're going to be stayingin the western part of the country.
You've really gotten He's not no riskbecause you're gonna be under risk of air
alerts and stuff like that. Butyou're gonna be fine and this trip is
(29:15):
definitely worth it. So he andseveral friends picked me up at the airport
in Krakau, Poland. We goto check out the airport, these very
small airport that has basically turned intothe main logistics space for NATO shipping materials
to the Ukrainians. Let me driveto the border and there's an incredibly long
wait at the border. I'm justkind of shocked. People have said there
(29:36):
have been times it's taking like thirteenhours to get to get from one side
of the border to the other.We get through the Polish side, okay,
and there's a friend of my travelingcompanions who's been his driver the whole
time. British guy, really goodguy. We get there, they show
your passports, he has to showthe car registration, all kinds of stuff.
Well, apparently our driver has anunpaid speeding ticket from the last time
(29:56):
he was in Ukraine. Now,in a lot of countries, you'd be
like, okay, you know,you pay the fine, you pay some
sort of delayed payment fee, andthen they send you on your way.
And I know a lot of peopleand a lot of listeners have heard about
the Ukraine having this reputation for beingnotoriously corrupt. Well, I can't say
Zelinsky's fixed it, but I cansay that since Zelinskiy enacted all kinds of
reforms and efforts to crack down oncorruption, everybody's paranoid about getting caught.
(30:22):
It doesn't mean necessarily, I don'tsay this is going I'm saying nobody wants
to get caught it. So Miketraveling companions are like, don't joke about
driving, don't you know, don'tdon't do anything. I'm like, okay.
And it turns out because of thisthat yes, he can pay the
speeding ticket and have this resolved insix to eight weeks. Until then he's
not allowed into the country. He'sour driver. It's a stick it's stick
shift. I don't know how todrive. That They were driven in Ukraine
(30:44):
before countries at war don't know whereI'm going, Like there's a million reasons
where week we couldn't have anybody elseto do it, and I kind of
started panicking, like I've gotten toUkraine and now I can't get any further.
And by the way, like Levovis probably like an hour's drive from
the border post, but it wasnot nearby. It's not like we could
walk there. We did not ahitch hike per se. A large bus
came by and border guards basically asked, could you take these guys till above,
(31:07):
and they should sure, And sowe did eventually get our passports back
and go in there and ended upin there. But as I mentioned,
as you mentioned that there's a midnightto five am curfew in the country in
which you cannot be on the street. These are the hours that the Ukrainian
military uses to move stuff around,and it's just an easier way to make
sure there's no civilian on the streetsto say, hey, I just saw
a column of tanks going down suchand such street and putting on social media
(31:27):
or something like that. So ifyou're in Ukraine, you're not supposed to
be on the streets from twelve tofive. I was told that, as
you know, non citizen Westerners,we would probably just get yelled at by
the police and told to get youknow, to get home. But if
you're Ukrainian and you're caught during outon the street in these hours, you
could get up in serious trouble.The expectation is that you're a saboteur.
There's something you're up to no good. So we've got this cli know,
(31:48):
ticking clock of a deadline. Wegot to the hotel after you know,
we got got to the center ofthe city, then got another car to
take us to to where the hotelis. Got there at eleven forty.
My traveling companion is, you know, my favorite restaurant is around the corner.
Let's see if we can get takeout like this. This is as
close as my life has gotten tobe twenty four Greg, there's this ticking
(32:08):
clock. The restaurant was closed.We got back to the hotel in fine.
Everything worked out fine, but thatyou know, I was a moment
of like, I've gotten to Ukraine, I've gotten like ten feet into the
country and I'm not gonna be ableto go any further because we have an
issue with our car. Everything workedout fine, many thanks to my traveling
companion James, who did an amazingimprovisation with all kinds of logistical issues.
(32:30):
Uh, this, this trip andthis reporting would not have occurred without him,
and he's an exceptional guy who's doinghis part to try to, you
know, help out people there.But yeah, crazy stories, crazy places,
and that's that's what I did forthe past few weeks. You had
Jack Byer lines in your head.I know it, maybe not out loud.
I don't have time to explain.We are running out time, bus
(32:50):
driver. Yes, oh man,Well, we are incredibly glad that you're
home safely. I know your familyis incredibly grateful as well. Thank you
for sharing what's happening there and yourown personal experiences with your readers and of
course here on the podcast, andso so Jim, I know that,
as you've already said, in someways, you're excited to get back to
our normal fair, which we willdo tomorrow. So see then, see
(33:14):
tomorrow. Jim Garretty, Nashtional Review. I'm Greig Corumbus of Radio America.
Thanks so much for being with ustoday. Please subscribe to the podcast if
you don't already, and encourage somefriends to do so as well. We'd
love to have them with us.Also, thank you for your five star
ratings and your kind reviews. Pleasekeep those coming. Get us on your
home devices. All you have tosay is play Three Martini Lunch podcast.
Follow us on X He's at JimGarretty, I'm at Dateline, Underscore DC.
(33:36):
Have a great Monday, and joinus again on Tuesday for the next
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