Welcome back to the podcast, bribe, swindle, or steel. I'm Alexandra Ragi. Today I'm speaking with

McCalla Morski, Director of Government Affairs with Razum for Ukraine. Razum is a nonprofit that

fosters democracy and supports civil society in Ukraine. Mikala, thank you for joining me.

Thank you for having me.

Razum means together, so it's together for Ukraine.

Can you give us an overview of the work that you are doing and what the organization has planned?

Razum was founded in 2014 during the Revolution of Dignity when students and civil society

activists and people from all walks of life in Ukraine gathered on the central Maidan

Square in Kyiv, Ukraine's capital, to protest the autocratic moves of the dictator,

Viktor Yonikovych.

We wanted to kind of be a bridge between American

civil society and Ukrainian groups that were trying to build democracy and prosperity in their

country. Since 2014, since the founding, Rasm has mainly focused on civil society, efforts,

anti-corruption activism, helping build and foster the kind of civil society space in Ukraine

that a democracy needs, that a thriving democracy needs. After the full-scale invasion began on

February 24th of this year, Rasm really went into emergency response mode. You know, you can't really

focus on building democracy or prosperity when your country is

being invaded. So to the degree that we can, we still focus on those things. It's extremely

important to us. But our focus right now is to stop the bleeding. I am part of the advocacy

branch of Razum. We focus on promoting nonpartisan research and policy solutions in Washington,

D.C. We want to make sure that the American public and American

lawmakers remember that not only a moral imperative to help the victim Ukraine prevail against

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