Good governance in Ukraine where people have a chance for a better life is worth me risking my life on these missions.

It's worth the higher gas prices, it's worth the money involved in sending high miles and rockets to the Ukrainian people.

That alone is worth fighting for. So there's many reasons why we should continue on.

Hello and welcome to Wise is happening with me, your host Chris Hayes.

Some of you probably have seen images that have been coming out of the Ukrainian city of Heirsson.

I don't know if I'm pronouncing that correct, it caresens K-H-E-R-S-O-N is how we transliterate that.

It was a city that was on the Dnieper River in the southern part of Ukraine, not that far from Crimea.

It had been taken by the Russians and under Russian occupation and recently Ukrainian forces pushed the Russians out of the city and the Russians evacuated.

There's all these really inspiring images of crowds massing on the street, crying and singing and playing the Ukrainian national anthem.

It's very evocative of images of liberation that we've seen in previous conflicts.

People under the boot of an occupying army and that occupying army being kicked out.

The liberation of this city marks yet another military victory for the Ukrainian forces who have shown a tremendous degree of aptitude and skill and bravery in pushing back the Russian occupiers.

I think I read somewhere that about 50% of the territory that Russia had at its peak in terms of Ukrainian territory was occupied has been taken back by Ukrainians.

We're about to enter this very difficult winter in which Russia has a mobilized many more fighting men through essentially a draft, though they don't call it that.

They're throwing a lot more manpower at the invasion and trying to hold the territory they have. There's also been the sustained targeted attacks at critical civilian infrastructure, particularly the electricity grid.

As Ukraine enters winter, that becomes more and more terrifying in terms of what it means for this civilian population.

I had just really been wanting to talk to someone who's actually fighting in Ukraine. Obviously that's difficult for a lot of reasons, but just being able to locate someone amidst a war zone can connect on the Starlink satellite internet system they've been using.

But also someone who speaks fluent English and we found someone. He's a really fascinating dude.

He goes by the name Macer Gifford. That is his essentially Numb to Gair. That's what he fights under. His birth name is Harry Row. He's a British national from Cambridge. You'll hear him describe who kind of a guy with strong internationalist commitments and maybe wanted to go on the Foreign Service and ended up in 2015 actually going to fight with the Kurdish YPG forces that were fighting ISIS at the time.

He then joined a sort of broader coalition of fighters there. He came back. He was the subject of a fair amount of press. He wrote a book actually about his time as a volunteer fighter.

In Syria and now, Russian invasion of Ukraine has gone to fight with the Ukrainian defense forces. As you'll hear, he's not in one of the international battalions that have been constituted but is actually directly under the Ukrainian defense forces.

He joined us from, well, you'll hear he made time to join us. He works in reconnaissance and discuss what the fight has been like, why he's gone to fight in a country that's not his own.

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