Tom Lemons was my first guest on the podcast, but that was about his dealings with a Florida non-profit domestic violence shelter.
He just got back from a trip to the Ukraine where he documented a humanitarian relief mission.
He now reports at a new site, Rnews.news
I asked him several questions related to the war.
Q: Is there a refugee crisis?
A: Yes, and he was emphatic.
“You really didn’t get a sense of it until you went to Centralia Train Station,” He told me. “Once you walk into that train stating it is just wall to wall refugees, just looking for a place to call home.”
Q: How badly has the infrastructure been hit by the war?
A: He said where he was, in the Western part of Ukraine in the City of Lviv, has not been hit as hard as cities like Kiev, Maripoul and Odessa.
“The West has been spared so far.” He told me.
Still, the day he went to deliver medical supplies on a secret mission he said there was a missile attack shortly after they left.
Q: Did he see any evidence of vigilante justice? There has been a lot of video on social media of Ukrainians engaging in vigilante justice.
A: Tom didn’t see anything like this.
Q: The people he talked to, what did they say they wanted the US to do?
A: He told me he got a range of views; there was not a conventional wisdom for a fly zone.
“The answers were kind of diverse, but the people on the ground seem to think we’re doing just fine.” He told me.
Q: What was the media like down there?
A: He said the news he saw was calling for a no fly zone but they weren’t hammering the west for any perceived lack of action.
Q: What is the COVID restriction situation in Poland and beyond?
A: Tom said he spent some time in Poland, particularly in Warsaw and saw no mask mandates and very few restrictions.
He said, ironically, that the one time he remembered he was required to put a mask on was in a McDonald’s, likely a directive from the US corporate office to all franchises.
Post Script
At the end, Tom stated his support for increased US involvement in the war. As I noted in the podcast, I wanted to link to the work of Michael Tracey, Glenn Greenwald and Jordan Schachtel.
All three are also on Substack but they have also been writing about the countervailing view; indeed, they fear that US escalation will quickly lead to WWIII.
Special Report: Talking Ukraine with Tom Lemons