Double R Flo-Town

From Florence to The Frontlines w/ Matt & Madison Floyd

• Robert Thomas & Reeves Cannon • Episode 19

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In this episode of the Double R Podcast, we sit down with Matt and Madison Floyd,  father and son native to Florence, who share their experience in Poland and Ukraine providing humanitarian aid, evacuating civilians, rebuilding homes, and witnessing the realities of war firsthand.

Madison, now studying politics in Poland, and his father Matt share how a single living-room conversation led them to the frontlines — working with international aid organizations, supporting refugees, and forming lifelong relationships with Ukrainian families impacted by the war.

This is not a political debate — it’s a human story, grounded in firsthand experience, sacrifice, and conviction.

00:00 – Intro: The Floyd Family & Why This Conversation Matters
02:20 – From Florence to Healthcare Entrepreneurship
04:30 – Madison’s Path from Florence to Europe
06:20 – “Why Don’t You Do Something?” The Moment That Changed Everything
09:00 – Poland, World War II, and Understanding History on the Ground
13:00 – Studying Politics in Poland vs. College in the U.S.
17:40 – Humanitarian Aid in Ukraine: What They’re Actually Doing
23:00 – The Human Cost of War: Women, Children, and the Border
30:00 – Freedom, Ukraine, and What Americans Miss About the War
37:40 – Can Ukraine Survive? Poland, Fear, and What Comes Next
42:27 – Closing Thoughts & Why Florence Still Matters

SPEAKER_03

Double R Flow Town. We have the Floyd men with us today.

Reeves

Matt and Madison.

SPEAKER_03

We're excited to have them. Thank you guys for coming. We've been talking about this for a few weeks. I've been excited. Hard to nail you down when you're in town. So we're glad we were able to get you while you're here. I think you're about to head out of town again soon, aren't you?

SPEAKER_02

Yes, sir, on Wednesday.

SPEAKER_03

So just I feel like most everybody knows you guys, especially here in town, but just kind of reintroduce yourself a little bit, just for the people that don't know, and then we'll jump into some more of the things that we really want to talk about.

From Nursing To National Agency

SPEAKER_01

All right, great. I'm Matt Floyd. I've I was born and raised here in Florence. Uh went to school here, Florence Christian School, uh, got into business, uh, specifically healthcare. Uh, Trinity Healthcare Staffing was the name of the company that um I ran here in town for for years, and I sold it about 10 years ago.

SPEAKER_03

Wow, it's been that long.

SPEAKER_01

It has been, it doesn't seem like crazy. It seems like yesterday, but it's been it's been 10 years ago.

unknown

Wow.

Reeves

You started as a registered nurse, even, right? Yeah, I did.

SPEAKER_01

I I worked as a nurse, worked at McLeod for for a while, and uh then I got into travel nursing. You know, I started doing the little jobs here and there, bouncing all over the state, and just ended up, you know, getting into it that way. Built a business that way.

SPEAKER_03

You kind of saw something. You were like, hold on, I see a need here, and yeah, yeah, that's you figured out how to fulfill it.

SPEAKER_01

Right. And and kind of it was one of those things where uh I did it. I I think I was more motivated by uh uh just getting into the business side and getting out of nursing. I I did nursing for a few years, but it really it wasn't my cup of tea, right? It's just I didn't I didn't really enjoy it. And um as I got more and more nurses to come work for the company, I was able to shift into like more the the business side.

Building Remote Teams Before It Was Normal

SPEAKER_03

The heyday of Trinity, how many people did you have working there and nurses? I mean, you guys were it it grew fast.

SPEAKER_01

It was right around somewhere between 800 and 850 people. Wow. Yeah, I don't remember the exact number because it's been so long ago. But yeah, we did business uh all over the country except for New York and California, because we chose not to.

Reeves

I'd like to talk more about that, but I know we have to.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Was Florence a good place to headquarter that company, you feel like?

SPEAKER_01

Well, uh that was tough. That that was and that that'll take me down a couple of years. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um we competed with, you know, billion-dollar companies that were, or several hundred million dollar companies that were based in much bigger cities. You know, San Francisco, uh Boca Ratan, Florida, and here we are, it's Florence. And I really struggled as the business grew to get really quality sea level people to come move to Florence. Right. Um, you know, they take our flow down airport, and they're like, whoa, this is not much here.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Uh compared to San Francisco, you know, or Boca Ratan. So what we ended up doing was um I I had some great executive level people locally here, and we just uh figured out how to do the remote model way before it was way before COVID. Wow. Yeah, we had you know, this is 15, 15 years ago, we had recruiters and account managers that lived in New York, New Jersey, wow, Florida, California, and we would everybody would just zoom in on one big screen and have a have a meeting, and there we go.

SPEAKER_03

That was pretty high tech at that time, wasn't it? It was.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

That's pretty cool. Yeah. It was fun.

SPEAKER_01

It was fun to do.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah. So what are you guys up to now? Ten years later, you're grown up in college. Yes. What what's going on now, guys? What are the Floyd men up to?

SPEAKER_01

Uh he's a world traveler, he's all over the place.

SPEAKER_02

But um it's a lot easier when you live over that way.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

Reeves

So tell everybody where you are living, Madison, kind of what you've been doing. You're 23 when you graduate high school. Where where did you graduate high school and then kind of from from there to what have you been up to?

The Callout That Sparked Action

SPEAKER_02

Right. So briefly I'll just say I I kind of grew up around here as well. Uh I bounced around up. I lived in Ohio with my mom for a while, but I remember being at Trinity Healthcare back in the day, you know, annoying all the workers. You were the little man right now. Oh, yes, yes. With the good hair. That was terrible. Even back then. And then uh ended up coming back down here. I went to Camden Military for a little while. Wasn't a punishment, uh Yeah, I graduated online because I graduated in 2020. Uh that was a pity. And then yeah, yeah, it was it was a tough year, but got into working right after. I applied to CFC and College of Charleston, but I didn't end up going. A lot of reasons, costs. Um, you know, at this time all the classes were online. Yeah. And I was like, I'm not paying 35 grand a year for online classes. Right. You know, I'm sorry. Smart. Um, yeah, so uh just stuck around working for a little while out of the lodge he had in near Sumter. Oh yeah. And uh yeah, uh suddenly a war started, you know, and we we we kind of got involved. I think he tells that story a little bit better, but I I started going over there a lot to help out in Ukraine, passing through Poland a lot, made a lot of friends, and long story short, I just ended up going to study there because that was that was where kind of my heart was at at the time, still is. Didn't move.

SPEAKER_03

So what what what connected you guys to to the Ukraine war? What tell us a little bit about how that connection happened?

SPEAKER_01

Have you ever had one of your children just call you out like on something? Yeah, oh yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's that's what it was. I'd I was I'd be sitting around the house watching the news, throwing my shoes at the TV and you know, cussing Putin and why is this happening? And uh he just was walking through one day and he was like, Why do you do that? You know, you can do something about it. So Wow We did. The light bulb kind of hit. Well, I mean, it was it was like he took a swing and the punch landed, you know.

SPEAKER_02

Wow, I didn't mean it like that.

First Missions At The Border

SPEAKER_01

You were just being honest. We was just from the heart. Wow. So we connected with uh have you ever heard of a a group that's headquartered in Florence called OM Ships? Yes. Yes, okay, the bigger organization, OM, uh is the global entity. Uh they're in 120, something hundred and thirty countries.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

We connected with them and um ended up um catching a flight to Poland within just a few months. Wow. And uh we met uh some other people with other organizations and just spent a while working at the Polish-Ukrainian border while all this mass of people was trying to come, were trying to come out of Ukraine into Poland. Um it was it was quite a spectacle, but we ended up you know just meeting a lot of really, really great people and making some close friends. And I think they were to give a little backstory of Madison. I remember Madison became obsessed at sometime 14, 15 years old, where World War II. And by the time he was 18 or 19, right around the time that all this was happening, I remember telling my son we had an agreement that I would buy all the books he wanted to read. That was a good one. If he read it, you'd buy it. I'd buy it. And I remember going to him and saying, you know, this is hard about I can't even believe what I'm saying, but I was like, every book from Amazon that you can get from Amazon, the world's largest bookseller on the subject of World War II, even remotely, I was like, you own it.

SPEAKER_03

And have read it.

SPEAKER_01

And have read it. Wow. Sometimes more than once. Wow. And he just kind of laughed it off. But that was the connection because it's hard to explain. We get to Warsaw, he's never been to Warsaw, but I'm following him around the city because he knows where he's going. He sees a memorial and he's like, oh, if we go up here and we take a left, and there's gonna be another threat up here. How do you know that?

SPEAKER_03

That had to be amazing for you.

History Mindset And On-The-Ground Learning

SPEAKER_01

From the from the pictures. It still is. Wow. He Yeah. Well, the Warsaw Uprising, it was very involved. Uh Warsaw was uh uh you know a big part of everything that went down in World War II. And uh this it's it's uh it's so neat to actually be there. Well, it's sad, but it's uh it's it's neat if you're a student uh of it, um, how uh uh several sections uh are famous and they're in the pictures where they might have lined up, you know, Polish Jews and just shot them. Well, the city was destroyed, but certain sections were are are still there, and they built the town back around those to leave them as a memorial. Wow.

Reeves

So I want to go back to that moment in the living room. You're watching the news, you're you're back home, you've probably been in Poland for at least a year, maybe right around that. You hear your dad kind of making comments about what we're receiving from the American news about what's going on in Ukraine and Russia. And you've got a certain understanding of that for that time. Your son's been living in Poland, you've developed, I guess, a different perspective. So tell me what your perspective was, Matt, and how it's changed as you've both been over there as well as learned from your son kind of first hand experience.

SPEAKER_02

It's actually we had uh just a minor correction, we had uh never been to Poland before that time. Yeah, I'm going into my first fourth year. So we that was uh straight up our very first experience in Europe at all. Okay.

SPEAKER_01

Right. Okay. I had never been overseas.

Reeves

So how is your perspective because we're talking to a bunch of Americans, right now at least on this podcast, and there's obviously a lot of contention between you know what to understand, what is right, what is true about what's going on over there. So I you've been over there now. Help us out. You want to take it?

SPEAKER_03

I think you just gave them a loading question.

SPEAKER_02

Abstract in the year 1500 or whatever.

SPEAKER_03

Even that statement, though, is very helpful because when you understand history, you understand what can happen in in the present time a little differently. But yeah, take us there, guys. Take us there.

University Culture And Costs In Poland

SPEAKER_01

It's been really amazing to watch him. He is uh, and he's my son, and he hates when I brag on him. He really, really does. And I'm not bragging, I'm just uh communicating what I see. He he becomes a student of wherever he wants to to go. And he he's got the worst travel bug of any uh anybody I've ever met. He wants to go see every everywhere. And um so before we ever got to Poland, he had, you know, he's reading Polish history, Ukrainian history, you know, the the relationship between the Ukrainians and the Russians. I mean, he he knows all this before we get over there. So he was kind of a hit with the Polish people when we got there because he actually knew uh a lot. Oh, I'm sure they love that. They ate him up, you know, they're just like, yes, an American that actually knows something about Europe. And um Ukrainian people view him the same way. I mean, he walking through Poland or Ukraine, a lot of times he'll be like, Yeah, that the that's the guy that was, you know, 17 and 75. I'm like, what what?

SPEAKER_02

It's just I've always tried to I've been studying there for this is my third year now. And um top of the class and uh you know that I worked for that. Um, but a lot of people are unused to seeing an American do well in an intelligent field.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

And I say that not as a uh a jab against all of us, but uh a reality that most people think of Americans as very stupid people. Well we've gotten lazy. Yeah, and the the neglect of everything else in life besides you know your immediate future, I think is pretty rife here in the States. And uh I I try to counteract that narrative when I'm over there, showing people that you know um Americans can do really well. We can be educated as well, you know. We're not all this sort of uh monolithic stereotype that you guys have imagined us to burger eating, you know, waving my flag everywhere.

SPEAKER_01

We can have respect for things and it's very neat to um just the cultural experience. You and I were talking the other day. You'd love to go over there with us. Well, I'm telling you, it's it's the most educational thing. You just come back more well-rounded. Like, what do you think of when you think of university? You think of Clempson, you know, Carolina and Tailgate, and that's what our students are doing. It's serious business over there. Wow. The students show up dressed like they're going to uh a funeral. Uh they got their little ties on, nice clothes, and it is serious. You have to wear that? You don't it it's not a rule.

SPEAKER_02

It's more of like an unspoken rule. Uh interesting. A lot of international students will dress down, but all the Polish students are dressed up. Wow.

SPEAKER_01

And and then it's serious, they're serious about their education. He doesn't have to take, you know, fluff courses over there sewing 201 or whatever it is, you know, that that that it the courses are to educate him on a specific subject.

SPEAKER_03

Are they hammering natty lights every afternoon or not much of that?

Languages, Networks, And Influence

SPEAKER_02

We'll do some of that. Okay. Students are still students anywhere in the world, I'd say. Um, you know, we we do have fun. We uh my my apartment's uh uh a known place to gather. Okay. But it w there's no frat sorority culture that is completely alien. People think of it like uh a Hollywood movie. Like we will, you know, go out, drink a lot, and the next day we're still at class at 8 a.m. and nobody misses it. Right. Because missing in class is you know, that'd deduct points from your grade, and then they won't let you pass it to the next year. It's very serious as well. I'd say Ivy League rules in the States are about every university's rules there. And what's the cost of college there? No, you won't believe me. I think actually we we we said it earlier. This didn't pass it, but yeah. My tuition per year is three grand for the whole year. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

And what would Clemson be this year? I didn't say fifty, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01

I wouldn't know. At least I'd forty five. Well, my daughter is in school in Ohio and her tuition's um I think it's like eighty-two I think a year.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. And she's got scholarships too.

SPEAKER_01

And she had that's the only reason she got to go to that.

SPEAKER_02

Right.

SPEAKER_01

Because she she she got some big scholarships. But um yeah, it it's the system's broken.

SPEAKER_03

It is the yeah, it is.

SPEAKER_01

And it's a you know, it where he goes to school globally is much higher ranked than most of our schools.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Much, much higher ranked.

SPEAKER_02

You win some, you lose some. I sometimes I get a little bit of FOMO for American universities, you know. Just cause I walk around C of C and I'm like, man, you know, these guys are having so much fun. But at the end of the day, that the statistics bear out that college kids in the States do not find themselves in their chosen degree. So that money is kind of just wasted on having fun. And I can have fun, and I also get a degree that is actually going to impact what I do.

SPEAKER_01

I think I think you are right where you were born to be. Maybe so.

SPEAKER_02

What degree are you going for? I'm in politics. So over there it works a lot different than here. I don't have any of the fluff courses, like he said. We also study international relations, so I could go into either field if I wanted to. And it's a it's a heck of a place to be studying politics right now. This might be our next ambassador.

SPEAKER_03

He'd be the ambassador of the U.S. in Poland.

SPEAKER_01

He amazes me. Um, he's almost completely fluent in Polish, which he has to be to graduate. That's a requirement.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And uh but you know, he's got really, really close Ukrainian friends, so those are two different languages, and I'll hear him speaking some Ukrainian. And then we get on a, you know, we're in Munich, and we're flying from Munich to to Warsaw, and he's having a five-minute conversation with the uh flight attendant in German. And I'm like, how many Wow. Uh but that's part of the culture over there. Everybody can is speaking. Multi-roll different multilingual. Wow. Everybody. It's English and Polish and Ukrainian and Russian. But uh geographically, I think it causes necessary. You know, it's like uh South Carolina, we speak one language and North Carolina speaks another, and Georgia speaks another, and Florida speaks another. That's how it is. So these people learn how to communicate with that.

Aid Convoys And Protecting The Vulnerable

SPEAKER_03

And you guys have gotten pretty connected over there, Poland and Ukraine. I mean, when you're when you go over there, you're meeting with governors and officials. I mean, you guys are deeply entrenched.

Reeves

Right. Right.

SPEAKER_03

We all do a lot of work over there.

Reeves

So what are you doing over there?

SPEAKER_02

We do a lot. We uh we we have our foundation here in Florence that uh him and my grandfather founded back in the day. The Madison Floyd Foundation. Yes, sir. And uh it used to deal with just Florence, South Carolina, and some minor uh international uh stuff. Then we found OM and uh we kind of branched out completely. And uh it was set just perfectly when the war started for us to really just expand our humanitarian aid into Ukraine, kind of as a disaster relief sort of thing. Yeah. And we we've done that for since the war started, since like March 22. And uh yeah, we it's convoys of aid, it's rebuilding houses, it's putting heaters in when the Russians strike the power infrastructure and nobody has heat in the winter. We put heaters in the houses, um evacuate people from the front lines, even give money to some organizations that write up reports of war crimes and stuff. Uh just you know, sort of trying to help people in every way that we can.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I I think uh it's it's probably good to point out th this organization when we first got there, you it uh all of Poland was in a chaos because here you've got Warsaw City of uh two million people, and very quickly it was three million people because all these Ukrainians are just getting out. So all these little towns on the edge of, you know, Poland are just the churches that are full, the civic centers where they have concerts to get Ukrainians sleeping on the floor.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. And it's all just women and children mostly. The men are fighting. Yeah.

A Humanitarian Lens Over Politics

SPEAKER_01

So it was a crisis. It was a true humanitarian crisis. And this organization uh had a small little office uh in in Warsaw, and and we have really helped them over the years expand that organization to help uh its uh widows, its orphans, it's its uh young widows, old. Little old ladies that lost their husband and they're they speak Ukrainian, can't speak Polish, maybe, but they're they're stuck and they've got nowhere to go. Uh this organization takes uh very good care of of those people.

SPEAKER_02

And that organization is sort of like a thoroughfare for what we do from Ukraine, sort of a a lifeline, I'd say. Warsaw's a safe place, at least for now, and they they have a big center of aid there where everything's kind of coagulated, and they they help people inside of Ukraine with some of our other organizations we partner with, and it's just sort of a meeting place for all those trying to go east to help.

SPEAKER_03

This helps me understand how passionate you are about it. When you when you hear you guys have relationships, I mean you have relationships with women and children who are in need, and and that's how your heart connects to this.

SPEAKER_01

Um there's so many things that have happened. I've got a crazy story. The very first time we show up at the border, yeah, we're in an OM van, so we get to drive around all the traffic, and we get up there, and we're uh you know, uh trying to help these people. And um it was it's a little foggy for me, so if I say something that's not exactly right, you correct me, but two girls were in the process of getting uh kidnapped by a sex trafficker on the Ukraine side.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

Narratives, Media, And Lived Experience

SPEAKER_01

And the guards, most of which are women in their 20s, guns drawn and everything, catch this guy and save these two girls. Well, they come back to uh the church that we were working at. We meet them, we've been friends with them ever since. The two girls that were almost like a child. Can you imagine trying to get out of Ukraine? Your house is getting bombed, and you're sitting in a car line, and then this guy comes in, you know, tries to take you. Um luckily, very, very fortunately, uh a lady that we were working with saw it going down and they ended up being rescued. And um every time we go over there, they come to us from wherever they're really yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Wow.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

Reeves

I think what's standing out to me is, you know, I'm I'm listening to you guys from the average American seat, and from for the average American trying to understand what's going on in Russia and Ukraine and what who's what it's a political argument. But you're coming over here or you're coming back here saying this is a humanitarian issue, not a political. It is a political issue, but there's a human humanitarian crisis that's going on.

SPEAKER_02

Well, it's very one-sided. It's it's a it's a political issue simply because it's not a two-sided humanitarian issue. If both sides were suffering in this way, we might say it's uh purely humanitarian issue. But it's not. It's one side being inflicted. Yeah, we'll be pain.

SPEAKER_01

We can get to the politics. We'll get into the weeds here in a minute on the Russia-Ukraine and what we have experienced. But just to try to paint a backdrop of what why would we're not the only people that have just decided, okay, I'm gonna go over there and see what I can. We know people from Charleston. There's two doctors that uh they did the same thing, and we didn't know about each other, but we've since met.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

But they just were like, okay, I'm gonna go over there and see what it's about. That that's really, you know, was I passionate about going over there and doing some good. Uh I I was it was more curiosity. I mean, I didn't know what to think.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

You know, I knew I'd I'd I hate Putin, I know that, but I didn't know anything about Ukraine. Well, I think we were both just shocked by Polish people, by Ukrainian people, by uh the there's so many adjectives that I could just drop that uh um I think a lot of both Polish people and Ukrainian people. Um but once we got over there and we saw all the devastation and the families ruined and you know lives lost that from just the initial invasion, and of course it's gotten worse and worse and worse as time has gone on. Um, and there's so many nasty things that the Russian army is guilty of uh and and Putin is guilty of.

SPEAKER_03

That we're not hearing about.

SPEAKER_01

You are not hearing about what is actually.

Freedom, Budapest Memorandum, Accountability

SPEAKER_03

I think we all have realized that now that we can't trust what we hear on the news. You know, I think everybody in our circle's woken up to that. But then that still leaves us with we don't fully understand what's going on over there, unless you're you guys who have been over there and you're entrenched in it and you understand it. So what do you want us to understand about what's going on over there?

SPEAKER_02

Well, there's a lot of I would say if I could relay anything to people, it's that narratives are a very powerful thing. They are. And uh in the news media, you'll have one narrative that's dominant usually. Two, maybe in the U.S. Um So it it it appears like, from a lot of people's standpoints in the States, this narrative was pushing Ukraine as the good guy, therefore they have to kind of put a counter-narrative on. And there's only two sides in a war, right? And uh, even if that doesn't lead a lot of people to siding with Russia, they're still skeptical. And what we we kind of want to push back against that and say just because this narrative has been established by the news media doesn't make that narrative true. It also doesn't make it completely false. And we have seen with our own eyes kind of changed our perspectives from completely skeptical on Ukraine in the first place, you know, all this stuff about Hunter Biden, all that, uh, to sort of a deeper understanding of history and how things have played out in the modern age to where there's just really no excusing from a rational standpoint uh this war. Right, if, you know, political weeds a little bit here, but you know, it it is such that a lot of people make realist, quote-unquote arguments back in the States. We have a dear friend, family friend of ours, and in Florence he always calls into the uh Ken Ard show and all that, and he's always talking about something or other. And um, but but we just have to tell him, you know, it's it's the the stuff that he parrots is not exactly grounded in any sort of reality. And we we've been over there, but you know, he'll argue tooth and wet nail with us about reality that we have seen with our own eyes that it has some sort of other justification. That's a big problem, I think, with uh America today is that you can argue with someone having been through a thing and they don't know much about this event, but they think that their opinion holds the same weight as yours on the matter. And I think that's a that that's kind of a misunderstanding of things.

Reeves

Yes, it's a fascinating reality of human experience. And but it's true. Lived experience, you have it. You can't argue with that.

SPEAKER_03

But I'll go back to and I'll let me go for it, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Um, because I I want us to get right to you know your question. What have what have you guys seen? What's your perspective? Um we're Americans and we value what more than anything else. We're freedom.

SPEAKER_02

Liberty.

Can Peace Be Negotiated Now

SPEAKER_01

They're fighting for freedom. And they're extremely tenacious about it. The history there is, you know, um I mean I'm 52 years old. 1991, I was a senior in high school. Ukraine voted for its own independence. They they protested. They voted themselves out uh away from Soviet Union, right? The Soviet Union collapsed. Ukraine all of a sudden has its independence. What people don't realize is when that happened, uh, a third of all of the Soviet Union's nuclear weapons were in Ukraine. So all of a sudden, Ukraine is the third largest nuclear power in the world. So the US, the UK, Russia, China, France create this treaty called the Budapest Memorandum. You can look it up. It'll tell you all about what happened. But Ukraine agreed to give up their nuclear weapons, give them back to Russia in exchange for assurances from this group of nations for uh against invasion permanently. So Russia is violating that agreement in in invading Ukraine, and the United States isn't stepping up to the plate, and the UK, like we should be, according to our own signed agreement. So right now, you know, Trump is hey, we're gonna we're gonna get peace, we're gonna get this settled. No, we're not, I don't I don't think. And and the Ukrainians I mean, why would they trust us anyway?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

We're in violation of the last signed agreement.

SPEAKER_03

Uh and we have a history of betraying our allies as well. Yeah, is there a chance Trump's playing 40 chess here a little bit? You know, obviously he understands four layers deeper than even any of us do. I'm hopeful that's the case. You know, he is the master negotiator. Maybe, maybe he's got a plan. You know, he's got so many other things happening too. You know, I don't know which one you sort out first, but if you were president, what would what what would you what would you think would be the right path?

SPEAKER_02

Well, I think even Ukrainians tend to give Trump the benefit of the doubt that he is he's got a plan. Okay. I'm a little bit more skeptical. I think if he's playing 4D chess, it's probably not for their interest, but well, someone in the America's interest.

SPEAKER_01

Or his gone.

SPEAKER_02

I think that it's my personal opinion that the reason why Witkoff is a real estate exec that was sent to Russia to negotiate with Putin is because they want to invest in Russia. Interesting. And they need to normalize relations for that to happen. So they're just trying to say, get this over with quickly, stop doing that, and hopefully, I think Trump has a good idea here that he wants to get everybody to start building together, have economic cooperation, and therefore they'll stay at peace. The problem is that usually doesn't work for very long.

SPEAKER_03

Right, right. We know that.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah, and we can't really enforce that either, straight short of uh invading Russia. Nobody wants to do that here. I mean, I don't even want us to do that, you know. Really? That's a horrific idea to contemplate.

Brutality Witnessed And Ukrainian Resolve

SPEAKER_01

There's so many things to discuss there. You know, uh Trump is always uh slamming NATO. Okay, yeah. I I can I can see his side of that. Um but he's migrated into just slamming Europe. I've heard him do that many times. And Polish people are European and and they've always had uh they like Americans and they're very, very hospitable to Americans when you're over there. I don't want that to change. But it is changing. It's kind of shifting a little bit because just of a verbiage that that's used that that maybe is a little bit irresponse.

Reeves

So I so I think we've only got about five, seven more minutes. Um what what else do we need to know from y'all's lived experience, your perspective, what can you help us understand that hadn't been said yet about?

SPEAKER_01

I think if I could speak to that for just a minute and then I'll let you uh go. But I I I don't think anybody knows how brutal all of all of this is, how absolutely brutal it is. We the first time we went into Ukraine, I had my son and my daughter with me, both of them. And we went to Buja, and it was right after the the initial invasion. And there's this church. The Russians came in, they got 70 civilians and um rumors of rape, uh, attack torture for days. And then they executed all of them by shooting them in the back of the head. And that was a moving point for me because the youngest person in that group was a 17-year-old girl, and I was standing there with my 17-year-old girl. And that's when uh I realized that this is this is nasty. Now, um watching it go on for years, the Ukrainians have become very, very effective at defending themselves. Last month, how many Russian soldiers were killed? 35,000. 35,000 last month.

SPEAKER_02

Killed or injured.

SPEAKER_03

Wow.

SPEAKER_01

Casualties.

SPEAKER_03

And they're putting up a heck of a fight, aren't they?

SPEAKER_01

No, they are they are uh they have shocked everybody. Ukraine will be remembered after this is all said and done as one of the most effective fighting forces in Australia.

SPEAKER_02

They can still win. You feel like they could still win. I think winning is a relative charged work. To win for Ukraine is to survive. To win for Russia is nothing less than everything. Yeah. Wow. So I think that a loss for Russia is actually a lot easier than people think. A loss for Russia would be to stop it right now. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And I think the difficulty is, you know, uh when we talk about NATO, is why haven't Poland and Germany and everybody else stepped in? Because Russia is so weak and Ukrainians are so strong.

SPEAKER_02

It's a fear. It's fear.

SPEAKER_01

And it is just fear.

SPEAKER_02

A nuke is a is a very also another charged word right there. Yeah. When people think about that, they they step back, even from their principles.

Spillover Risks And Polish Readiness

SPEAKER_01

You know, NATO is supposed to, if a NATO country is attacked by Russia, they're supposed to defend themselves. Well, I told you I was on a train um in Poland going from the You were on this train. You both were on this train, yeah. Me, my son, and his best friend over there, uh a Polish attorney. Um, we were traveling, and the very next day that train was bombed by uh the tracks. I I'm sorry, I didn't mean a misspeak, but they blew up the tracks to try to derail the train, which would have killed a lot of people. Just so happened the train was going fast enough to jump the blown up spot and nobody was hurt. But that was the train we were on the very following day.

SPEAKER_03

And I'm thinking, oh I think we all f think that they hadn't crossed that line in Poland. Like they they are.

SPEAKER_01

They're sending operatives into Warsaw and setting things on fire.

SPEAKER_02

They burned down a mall last year, like a whole shopping mall. Uh late at night, of course, nobody was in there, but yeah, they burned to the ground. Wow. They they do a lot. Yeah. Uh we we we consider ourselves already kind of at war in Poland. Really? Recently there was a document circulating, everybody got a letter in the mail that said uh, which means uh you know, letter for your safety, basically. And it was instructions of what to do in the event of uh war. So scary times.

SPEAKER_01

Discussing with him trying to find a little bunker area in town and fill it up with water and you know, non-perishable food and that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_02

Poland is not instigating this. You know, people will say that back here that we're instigating it somehow in Eastern Europe. It's no no nobody wants to go to war with Russia, really. I mean, some of us do as individuals, but we we know what that means. But they just keep prodding, flying drones into the airspace, shutting down the airports. When I was in Copenhagen for studies, they shut down the airport three days in a row, just flying drones into the airport.

SPEAKER_03

I find it honorable, guys, because it's one thing to talk about this, but you guys have put your life on the line. I mean, that's how much you believe in it. You're allowing your son to go back, I mean, and because he's passionate about it and it's a risk.

SPEAKER_01

Well, he's 23. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

I told him I thought I'm going to Harkiv next Friday. Uh and uh and when I tell him this, I'm just sort of like telling him these days. Because used to I'd ask permission, but you know. He's a grown man. He is a grown man, he makes his own decisions.

Standing With Ukraine And Closing Thoughts

SPEAKER_01

I don't love him going over there and be bopping around for for two weeks at a time, but it's uh, you know, he's passionate about it. And uh I just ask him to be careful, and that's all we can do. But to back to, you know, kind of summarize, yeah. We support the Ukrainian people, we support the Polish people. Um I I am against Putin and everything that he stands for and everything that he's doing. I think he's a mass murderer. Um he he uh uh targets the the Ukrainian women and children. Uh it's been that way since day one. And they're I I just overland, overexpanding, you know, his former Soviet empire. He doesn't mind murdering his own people, sending them 35,000 casualties a month. Um so it's a it's a terrible situation, and we're we're doing what we can to let people know what is actually going on. And uh yeah, we we solidly stand with the Ukrainians on on this issue.

SPEAKER_03

We I appreciate what you guys do, and we also appreciate what you guys do here locally. We know there's a lot of things that happen locally that you know you never get said, but we you know, I we're passionate about Florence too, and and I know you guys will always feel you know, Florence is home for you guys too, and so I just appreciate all you guys do.

Reeves

Thanks for coming. Thanks for the conversation. Hopefully, we can continue this.

SPEAKER_03

I think we need a part two for sure.

Reeves

Your dad knows how to do that from 2015.

SPEAKER_03

Early, early next time.

Reeves

We can pull it off.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you, guys. Thank you.