A former U.S. Army officer who runs a foundation evacuating Ukraine’s wounded says the last two weeks have exposed something simple: Ukraine agreed to an energy cease-fire it was never asked about, and kept it. Russia broke it the same night. “If you keep being a country that says yes,” she says, “it’s going to show everyone the country that says no every time.”
Meaghan Mobbs is president of the R.T. Weatherman Foundation, which moves wounded Ukrainian soldiers to European hospitals, trains combat medics and brings home the remains of foreign volunteers killed in Ukraine. She is a clinical psychologist and the daughter of former U.S. special envoy Keith Kellogg. Speaking to Independence Avenue Media’s Anna Zynevych in Kyiv — as Ukrainian officials report that U.S. warnings of incoming ballistic missiles have stopped arriving — Mobbs argues that no other country can replace American intelligence, that giving Russia a concession before it agrees to anything is “extraordinarily backward” sequencing, and that the real target of Russian, Chinese and Iranian influence operations is the American belief that anything is worth fighting for.
She also tells the story of Grady Kurpasi: a former Marine missing in the Kherson region, a chance question from a commander in Kharkiv, and a flag-covered casket on a tarmac in North Carolina.
Recorded in Kyiv on Oct. 20, 2026. Edited for length and clarity.
