The Daly Express
Patrick Chovanec on Helping Ukraine
(upbeat music) - Hi everyone, this is John Daly. I'm here with another episode of The Daily Express. My guest today is a very interesting and accomplished fellow. He's an economist for a wealth management firm in New York. He's a writer, an author, an educator, a world traveler. He's a pilot, he's been in the past a political strategist, a political advisor, he's a public speaker. He's also spent a ton of time in China. He's worked there, he's top there. He's done a lot of traveling there. He also has a book out right now called Clear for the Option, a year learning to fly. You can buy it wherever books are sold. I'm talking about Patrick Schabannik. How's it going today, Patrick? - Great, thanks for having me. - Well, absolutely, absolutely. Thank you for being on the show today. So you're a very busy guy. I appreciate you taking the time from me. There are lots of topics we could talk about, but I wanted to discuss with you a project you were very deeply involved with, and probably still are what it sounds like. Regarding Ukraine, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, of course, started almost two and a half years ago. Some would argue longer, but the big invasion that we saw was then a lot of innocent lives have been lost since then. And since the very beginning of the conflict, people like me have been wondering what we can do as average American citizens to help the Ukrainians. We can, of course, call our elected representatives and encourage them to continue U.S. funding. There are charities we can write checks to, but you took a unique, more hands-on approach and became personally involved with an organization goal toward providing a rather unique resource to the Ukrainian people. Can you talk about that project and your role in it? - Yeah, like a lot of people, like you, I was sitting at home watching TV, wondering how I can help in a meaningful way. And I got an email from a friend of mine who I knew from Hong Kong, who said I'm driving an ambulance to Ukraine and from London, can you contribute? Can you help me out? And I almost like running a marathon, right? And I said, yeah, I can, but you gotta help me out get me involved in this. What is this all about? And through process, I got in touch with those people and got signed up for a convoy. And in May, I flew to London and we drove across Europe with these ambulances, what they do with this organization Medical Lifelines Ukraine does is it purchases used ambulances in the UK, refurbishes them, packs them full of medical supplies, and then has volunteer drivers take them into Ukraine to either to the border, if you wanna stop there, or I proceeded to Lviv and met the people who we were handing our ambulances over to, which was a really fantastic experience. - Oh, that's great. I mean, and so people may not, and I learned a lot about this just kind of reading your tweets and reading. There's a GoFundMe page that helps where people can contribute. We'll definitely put that in the show notes. But from what I understand, the average life expectancy of an ambulance in Ukraine is just six months, is that correct? - Yes, yes. They go through a lot. These ambulances are going to the front lines, they get targeted either in the crossfire or sometimes intentionally by Russian forces. And so, and of course the conditions near the front lines are not exactly optimal for any vehicle to survive very long. So yes, there's a dire need for them, and they're helping both combatants who are wounded, but also noncombat, who are stranded in their homes in the crossfire or just have normal medical conditions that can't be attended to under wartime conditions. I mean, one of the most rewarding things is when we get videos from the people who receive these ambulances, maybe a week later, and you can see an elderly person being brought to the hospital who otherwise would have been stranded and unable to get medical help, you feel like that made a difference. - Oh, and I'm sure they were very appreciative for sure. I remember, I think you posted, I don't know if it was after you had already left, but you had already posted a picture of one of the ambulances in action, and I was like, wow, they really get that out there in circulation quickly. - Yes, yes. And a lot of people would ask me, they'd say, oh, that's, we're worried, we're scared. I mean, I was delivering it to Lviv. Lviv does come under occasional attack. I thought the risks were acceptable. The thing I was most nervous about was driving a stick shift across Europe, which I don't have a lot of experience with. When they asked, can you drive a stick? I was like, yeah, sure. And then went and took a couple lessons to brush up. But the people who I met on the way were fantastic. I mean, all these people are taking time off to do this. They don't have to do it, it's something that they want to do. And it's also a really eye-opening experience to step into Ukraine and to see what life, at least in Western Ukraine, which is far from the combat zone, but still affected by everything that's going on, what it's really like. And that was very emotional in many ways. I attended the funeral of two soldiers from Lviv who have been killed just in the days that we were on the road with the ambulances. And they come, you go to the, I followed the procession to the actual cemetery and saw the graves of people who come from all walks of life, all ages, some of them were young, some of them were my age, your age, business people, people with kids of shipping college. And now their family misses them. And it's a really dramatic thing to see that, not on the news, but in real life. - There was a, along those lines, there was a picture you posted that really sort of took me back to. You talked about the sheer number of funerals. There was this, I think it was sort of like a plaque or bulletin board, but had all these huge number of pictures. I think of just recent funerals, the ones that were just taking place. - Every day. - Every day, every day. - So in the center of town, and I should explain that the town feels, Lviv feels like any European city. People are out at night, at bars, life goes on. But then in the center of town, there are sandbags protecting key buildings and churches from missile attack. And then you have this placard up every day, which shows what the funeral. And there's gonna be one funeral every day. Sometimes it's for multiple people. In this case, it was for two. Every single day. And there was a woman who was reading the sign who was crying because she knew one of the men who was being buried that day. So it's a strange juxtaposition between normal life goes on. And this war, which is this constant drumbeat of death that nevertheless affects them. - And you mentioned, you were in Western Ukraine, not on the front lines, but you still have all these signs of war that you're seeing. Didn't you spend at least some time in a bomb shelter while you were there overnight or something like that? - Yes, so all the hotels have bomb shelters. There's an app, which actually Mark Hamill is the voice to. That loop from Star Wars is volunteered to be the voice on the air raid app. And in the middle of the night, I got an alert and I went down to the bomb shelter, which was actually kind of a nice lounge in the basement of our hotel. And I sat there for about 15 minutes until the warning stopped. What happens is that whenever there's a launch of an aircraft or a missile from Russia, the alert goes out everywhere. And then when they are able to determine where it's heading, then the regions that aren't affected, the alert goes off. And that was the case here, because it wasn't even heading towards us. And what Ukrainians tend to do, I'm a visitor, so I'm gonna respond to any kind of alert. They tend to wait until maybe 15 minutes or so in. And then they say, oh, okay, it must be real 'cause it's heading towards us and maybe we should head somewhere. 'Cause otherwise their lives would be just disrupted constantly. And that's where people actually get caught in these bombing and missile attacks, is people who are either too old to move readily or they've heard so many warnings that didn't end up being anything that they start to ignore warnings and then they get caught in the open. - Well, I really admire and appreciate the work you've done, Patrick. And really, I think it's sort of documenting what you saw too. I think it's very helpful in talking about it here. I think it's hard to imagine. We live in the United States. We don't understand that sort of culture. And I also wanted to talk, go ahead. - On a personal level, I wanted to set an example for my kids to say when you see something happening in the world, it's not just out there. You can do something. And just because you can't do a lot and you can't write history doesn't mean that you can't have a positive impact on what's happening. - No, that's great. That's a great message for sure. And like I said, we'll definitely put the link to the program and the show notes so people could donate too. You were telling me there's another one getting ready to leave pretty soon as well, another caravan. - There is. And somebody who reached out to me because they saw that I was doing it and said, I'd like to do that too. And they're going on this one which leaves really only in a week or so to deliver more ambulances. So that's a good feeling too. - And you, where there's, in your caravan, was this like seven or eight ambulances? - There were seven ambulances. - Average. - Oh, that's great. That's great. So I wanted to also talk to you about Ukraine and the context of US politics. I believe I'm right on this. Both former Republicans, I think we're probably of the Reagan-esque variety. And from my assessment, and maybe you have a different view of this, I think President Biden has handled the Russia Ukraine conflict, at least directionally right. I think there's been, he's been slow in a number of areas. But it's been disheartening for me to see this rather hostile, anti-Ukraine sentiment growing within today's Republican party, the whole party's not there, but it seems to be significant enough where it's getting in the way of funding and all that. I know J.D. Vance, Donald Trump's running mate has been one of the loudest voices on that front, at least from a position of leadership. He famously said he doesn't care what happens to the Ukrainian people, which is a pretty stunning clip. And he goes out of his way. He tries to blame Ukraine for the problems with US border security and US entitlement programs. And it's hard to try a line there that makes sense. Donald Trump himself sort of notoriously pro-Putin. He was kind of tough with them when he was president, but he's definitely sympathetic and Tucker Carlson has his ear apparently, and that's another guy who's been very anti-Ukraine. Now that Kamala Harris is apparently gonna be the Democrats nominee, people may not assume she's gonna see things the same way Biden did, but she may not, it's hard to say. How concerned are you going into whatever happens in November or about the future of Ukraine? I guess whether it's Trump, Vance, whether it's Harris or somebody else seems to me, I'm concerned, are you concerned at all? - Well, we just had that NATO meeting and everyone was concerned. Zelensky is obviously concerned about a fate of his country, but other NATO countries, remember Finland and Sweden joined NATO because of the invasion. They already had a very cooperative relationship, but they were notoriously neutral countries during the Cold War and yet saw this as the impetus to join NATO. So they're all concerned about what happens and they know that November is a important decision point for the direction that U.S. policy will take. At the convention, at the Republican convention, there were signs saying end the war now and Trump will end the war now. I mean, I think we know what that means, that the people who have surrounded Trump have been uniformly critical of Zelensky, uniformly critical of Ukraine, often blaming either the U.S. or Ukraine for provoking Putin into invading the country, which I find ridiculous. But you'll hear that rhetoric constantly. So we know that if Trump's promising to end the war immediately, that means on Putin's terms, that means on terms that are favorable to Russia. And I would imagine that those terms would be a surrender of all the territory that's occupied by Russia right now, including Crimea. And some kind of promise, number one, not to join NATO and number two, not to join the EU, because people forget that a lot of what provoked this wasn't, people say it was about Ukraine wanting to join NATO, but that was always kind of a far distant thing. Now, what he was closing the door per say, but there were a lot of things that would have had to happen for Ukraine to join NATO. Ukraine was very interested in joining the EU and getting on track to join the EU. And Putin did not want that to happen. He did not want Ukraine to become part of Europe. He wanted to be part of the former Soviet Union, right? And Russia's sphere of influence. So Ukraine would have to agree to all those things to have peace. And of course, the alternative would be the United States simply cuts off funding, which for a long time, it looked like that might happen because the Republicans were blocking that, or at least some Republicans, enough Republicans were blocking that in the House. So that's a real concern. How much now would Ukraine immediately surrender? Would the Europeans do something to sort of keep them in the fight? Yes, but it would be difficult to do without US support. So I think it's a very real concern. I think that the Biden administration has been one of the successes. And I'm a former Republican. I'm not necessarily inclined to always credit Biden with doing the right thing on a number of policy matters. But I think he's walked the line between getting the United States directly involved. There were calls for a no-fly zone, which I think would have been a very dangerous thing because it would have put US planes in the air, potentially shooting at or shooting down Russian planes or vice versa. And that's a very dangerous situation. So he's avoided doing certain things that would escalate the war or expand it. But at the same time, has imposed real costs on Russia, has provided enough meaningful support for Ukraine to be able to prevent Putin from achieving many of his objectives. And at the same time, it's really worked very closely with our allies in NATO, not constantly slamming them for their contributions, but recognizing that different NATO countries contribute different things. And some of those things are political and diplomatic in nature, or even just strategic in nature, like Finland, bordering on Russia. Sweden, providing strategic depth in the Baltic area. All of these things have been meaningful contributions to European security. I wouldn't like to see those things thrown away. I hear you. I hear you. Well, that's very valuable in sight. I think it's sort of easy for us in the United States to sort of tune out Ukraine. Like I said, the invasion was two and a half years ago, roughly. Well, one interesting thing about traveling through Europe, in that sense, is that it's much harder for Europeans to tune it out. You can drive to Ukraine. And so when I was in the UK, there might be a few kind of Nigel Farage-Trump-like characters out there, or Le Pen, who has actually taken money from Putin. But the bulk of people who I met were much more solidly in favor of supporting Ukraine. And just average people that I've talked to in the UK or in Europe thought it was much more important. Poland thinks it's very important, obviously. And so this divide that's taken place in the United States, where it seems like some distant thing, that's not the case in Europe. There's a much more unified sense that this does affect us and it does matter. Do you feel like the Biden administration has been negligent in maybe making a strong case to the American people for the importance of Ukraine? I mean, it's not just what we're doing by sending them things, by giving them money for the war effort. We're not just doing it as charity. I mean, there's an international benefit. There's a benefit to the United States. The other bad actors are watching in the world to see what happens, to see what the United States does. Do you think most people may not understand that? And do you think it was in America and that maybe our leaders haven't conveyed that adequately? I think that there can be more done in terms of communication, absolutely. And it's not just about Ukraine. For instance, Taiwan. Taiwan's another area where there could be a confrontation, where the United States would face a much more direct role. And then people will ask, why are we there? What is this about? And unless there's a clear communication to the American people about why this matters, the tendency is to say this is something that's far away and why should we care. One of the challenges, though, is that the way that presidents and politicians communicate with Americans has changed over the past decade or so. And it has tended away from me. I was just thinking, as you were asking that question, how we kind of need a fireside chat, like FDR would sit down and explain what we're fighting for and why we're doing the things that we're doing. But I remember Trump was the one who stopped doing the radio address, because nobody was listening. So the president used to give a radio address for a half an hour every day and got into issues. But very few people have the patience for that anymore, and they're getting news in the forum, not just the soundbites, but of tweets. And it becomes harder to make-- it becomes easier to make sort of memes and snarky remarks about things and much harder to convey a serious substantive argument about anything in the world. And that is a challenge. It's not an excuse to say why somebody's not doing it effectively, but it does pose a new challenge, I think, to people who want to communicate things that are not-- can't be absorbed in a sentence. That's a very good point. I mean, it's-- you almost have to get through to a lot of people have a dancing TikTok video, but it means this stuff. But yeah, no, that's a very good point. Yeah, I saw a TikTok video just earlier today of Kamala Harris riding a shark with a battery chasing Trump, which obviously is an allusion to Trump's fear of sharks and batteries that he's been talking about, which is really funny on the one hand, but it also means that that's kind of the discourse that catches hold of-- and that's the basis on which we're going to make a decision of who can make a funnier TikTok video as opposed to what does Taiwan or what does Ukraine matter and how should we be navigating these shoals? That's a conversation. And unfortunately, all too often falls by the wayside. And you go back and you look at presidential debates. And I'm not saying all these people were stellar intellects, but they can have these conversations. You go back and you watch these debates. I don't want my kids watch these debates anymore, because they're yelling in insult matches. When I was growing up, I watched them. I learned things about the candidates, but I also learned things about the world. And I would have wanted my kids to watch it. We don't have those kind of discussions anymore. And it's really a shame. Now, I remember, you see all these video clips back to the pre-Trump time when you had Romney debating Barack Obama in 2012. And you know-- Each and every-- Go back to-- yeah. When they were building the tournament. Yes. We were schooled on what they were talking about. It's too serious. We're at risk of sounding like two old guys going, well, in my day. But things have changed in very clear and substantive ways. And it presents leaders with a challenge about how to communicate with about these issues. It really does. It really does. Well, I don't want to keep it too much longer, Patrick. I did want to give you an opportunity to talk about your book, "Clear For Option." I'll let you obviously discuss it. It sounds like you-- well, you're a pilot now. It's sort of an interest you sort of took on during the pandemic. You didn't think you could ever do it, but you did. And then you wrote a book about it, can you talk about that? I, like many people, was locked down during COVID and didn't know what to do with myself. And I started playing a new game on the PC. I enjoy these things called Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020. And I'm a curious person. So I started having questions about it, started taking online ground school, and eventually said, maybe I could do this in real life. Maybe I should take a lesson. And a year later, got my pilot's license. I never dreamed before COVID that such a thing would happen. And it's the last book that anybody who knows me expected me to write. They would have expected something on the economy, on China, maybe on politics. But I ended up learning so much about this area of life that we all experienced, right? We all get in a plane. We're kind of a little nervous because we don't really understand what's going on. And we glance in that cockpit and we see all those lights and buttons and dials and don't know what to make of that. And I learned all about that and wanted to share that experience so that people who were maybe intent thought maybe they could do that. Or maybe people who are just curious about this modern thing that we do flying and understanding it a little bit better could have some of the benefit of that experience as well. And so that's why I wrote that book. Great, great. I'm sure people will find that interesting. I think a lot of people are in that same spot where it's always something they sort of thought about, but maybe hesitant to pull the trigger on. We'll put a link to it in the show notes. Patrick, I wanted to thank you again. This was very interesting, a very, very nice conversation. I got a lot from it. Anything else you'd like to plug before we leave? Anything else you're working on? Oh, I'm not a big plugger. I'm diving now. I taught myself how to write a book. So now I'm doing a lot of research in the writing about China, which has been a big part of my life. And but then when I really get into it, I realize how much more I have to learn. So that's maybe a project that I'll be involved in for the rest of my life is writing different things about China because I want people to understand, and this is, again, one of these things where I think people see these things in headlines. They worry about them. They wonder about them. And yet there's so much history. There's so much backstory. And I enjoy explaining, as somebody who's lived in China for many years, what this is really all about? And what might we encounter over the next decade or so when it comes to China? So I'm hoping to write something along those lines. Excellent. And I'm sure it'll be an interesting read. Thanks again, Patrick. You have a great day, all right? Hey, thanks a lot for having me on. Good to be with you.