Hey there everyone,
As most of you know, I’m in Kyiv right now. I arrived late Saturday on a convoy of 11 Danish cars for the Armed Forces of Ukraine. I left Copenhagen Friday morning at 6 am so it’s a long drive in old cars. The Suzuki Grand Vitara I donated had 300.000 ks on the meter, but the Ukrainians will put it to good use behind the frontline.
We had a bit of trouble with a couple of the other cars along the way. One was losing the exhaust pipe, which we managed to fix with a bit of duck tape. However, the car that blew the engine and had to be towed 100 ks through Western Ukraine won’t reach the frontline for a while!
Due to the threat of Russian attacks we lost our GPS signal just outside Kyiv and had to find our way through this buzzling city the old fashioned way. It turned out the easiest location to meet our Ukrainian counterparts was the Maidan. Literally, you just need to follow the highway from Lviv in Western Ukraine and go straight until the road ends. Then turn right and the Maidan is just 500 metres ahead. That was how I greeted you late Saturday:-)
I’m busy with meetings during the day and at night to bring you the best insights to what’s going on. I’ll just mention here that I paid another solemn yet lively visit to Bucha yesterday and was hosted by the mayor. My town in Denmark is signing a “friendship agreement” in Bucha so I went with my local council member who was also my co-driver on the way here.
The mayor took us to the memorial for the Russian war crimes. 560 people were killed point blank by the Russians and +30 are still missing and to the crossing were the Ukrainian Armed Forces made the hard stand and stopped the Russian attempt to reach Kyiv. We finished of with lunch at a Ukrainian restaurant. The mayor had lots of vodka toasts to make:-)
I’ve lined up a Ukraine Special Live Q&A for paid subscribers tonight at 9 pm Kyiv, which is EST +6. I’ll share all the insights I’ve managed to gather so far and hope you will join me. As usual I’m looking forward to taking your questions:-) You can find the session by copying this link to your browser: https://open.substack.com/live-stream/429202?utm_source=live-stream-scheduled-upsell
See you tonight.
Cheers,
