Club Luncheon: Eyewitness Ukraine

Maurice O’Connell has just returned from five months in Odesa, Ukraine. There he teamed up with a group of Ukrainians

helping Ukrainians. The central humanitarian hub was run out of a former university building and provided 200 welfare

aid packs to refugees daily. Considered by many to be a “front line city” it was largely bereft of foreign volunteers.

Maurice also regularly went to front line villages to deliver aid. Maurice’s mission was humanitarian but he took a keen

interest from a military perspective having served in the British Army. Maurice’s talk will cover his humanitarian

activities as a self-funded volunteer but will also focus on his reflections of a country at war, the Ukrainian people and