Hello and welcome to Battleground Ukraine's big interview with me Saul David and Patrick Bishop.

Today we're talking to Dr Richard Loftouse, a former lecturer in history

at the University of Oxford, who now works as a journalist. Richard has made two trips to Ukraine

in the past few months and interviewed a fascinating array of people, including the founder of the Georgian

National Legion, which is a special operations unit that has been working for Ukrainian military

intelligence since 2016, a Crimean Tata who runs a cafe in Kiev, and a couple who were

forced to hide in their basement while Russian troops rampaged outside.

Richard, welcome to the podcast. You recently returned from your latest trip to Ukraine.

Tell us why you went in the first place and what you found when you got there.

Thank you very much. And hello, Saul. Very, very happy to be on the podcast. Yeah, so last year,

I was obviously following events going right back to Russia's invasion.

And like so many other people, I was somewhat outraged at what Russia was doing.

And the more I read about it, the more I wanted to do my bit, that was all this amounted to.

And I got wind of this volunteer organisation in Ukraine, car for Ukraine, and made contact with them

and then with some of their British colleagues here in Britain who were organizing

vehicles to drive over and I thought I could pitch in and maybe get involved and that all

started to come together in the new year. So we went over in twice now in 2023, once in February and once in

April. Okay, now during your trip there, I should mention you're a former university lecturer.

You taught history at the University of Oxford, but more recently you've been working as a journalist.

So I think your journalistic instincts must have kicked in and you thought, I need to talk to a few

people when I'm there.

You know, who knows how useful this material is going to be?

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