“There's going to be immense human suffering in days to come.”
Army veteran David Ribardo dropped his real estate career and flew to Ukraine to help civilians get food and medicine. Here’s why he thinks the war is far from over …
Army veteran David Ribardo dropped his real estate career and flew to Ukraine to help civilians get food and medicine. Here’s why he thinks the war is far from over …
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00:00We're just finishing up a supply drop here in Mi'klaq, unloading all of this stuff here.
00:10After college, I went into the army and I did eight years as an infantry officer and
00:15I served in Afghanistan.
00:16This past summer, watching the Afghan drawdown as the U.S. forces went back home, I was very
00:23emotionally kind of distraught because this was the culminating chapter for something
00:27that I spent so many of the years of my life dedicated to.
00:30As the conflict in Ukraine kicked off, I said, hey, maybe there's a chance I can do something
00:36here.
00:51That has grown into what's truly an international organization, where we have people from all
00:56different countries all around the world, different time zones.
00:59We have remote people who volunteer on the internet with outreach and organization administration,
01:05and we have people here on the ground driving supplies.
01:08We're currently with our partners, Stay Safe Ukraine, who are dropping off a huge supply
01:13load of clothing, food, medical supplies, baby formula, and all of these wonderful items.
01:21This warehouse is all going to help people in need that have been refugees from these
01:25occupied areas.
01:31So right now I'm in Lviv, which is a fully functioning first world city.
01:36And so if you're here, we can go to the stores, the shelves are fully stocked, the patterns
01:42of life are normal.
01:43We can drive down the street, get stuck in traffic.
01:46As you keep going closer to the conflict area, now instead of just checkpoints, you have
01:50big fighting positions with overhead cover and places for the vehicles to be dug in.
01:58Simultaneously here we are going out for burgers while across the street they're getting ready
02:01for a war.
02:14The first week, just because we had like Ukraine in our name, literally everyone was opening
02:20their pocketbooks.
02:21You know, $50,000 would just show up and we're like, wow, this is great.
02:25And then after a week it went down to next to nothing.
02:28We're watching the Russian forces switch their tactics.
02:32And so at the beginning of the war, they tried to blitzkrieg where they were just trying
02:37to come in from all three directions and just take over the whole country in a couple of
02:40days and that didn't work.
02:42So now they're doing a much more doctrinally correct Russian assault, which involves using
02:48massive artillery fires to pulverize everything in advance of their ground troops.
02:53And so what this means is that there's going to be increased civilian casualties.
02:58We look at Mariupol.
03:00That is a perfect example of what we can expect for cities such as Mykolaiv and Kharkiv as
03:06the war progresses.
03:08So there's going to be immense human suffering in days to come.
03:12The need has shifted to become this long-term sustainment of these people who are unable
03:18to go to the store because there's no store there anymore.
03:21It got blown up.
03:22There's a huge need for resources in this conflict, for money, for fuel, for donations
03:28of medical supplies, clothing and food.
03:32And those are the things there that anybody can do.