The latter wasn’t just a supportive token of some far-off land invaded by Russia 3 ½ years ago, it flew this day on an updraft of reality, enlivened by the scenes — some heartbreaking, others heart-lifting and filled with resolve — witnessed by Larry Connor, the founder and managing partner of The Connor Group.
Connor’s three trips in the past two years to the front lines of the war in Ukraine — the last one concluding just over a week ago — have involved him in a humanitarian project that has empowered everyday Ukrainian citizens and helped save countless lives.
Along with his business acumen and a resume packed with the pursuits of an extreme adventurist, Connor is known for his philanthropy.
Three years ago, he was introduced to Mark Antal and his wife Christine Quinn Antal. Mark was a decorated Green Beret and an elite Delta Forces operator; Christine was an Army JAG attorney.
Although retired from service and now living in New York City where they’re raising their three young daughters, they were driven not to sit back and be observers as injustices were being inflicted on people around the world, especially in Afghanistan and Ukraine, countries to which they once had been deployed.
They formed Task Force Antal (TFA), a non-profit organization that is equal parts a real-life version of the Mission Impossible films and a modern day take on Florence Nightengale, the iconic battlefield nurse and caregiver.
Their organization is aided by numerous other retired special forces personnel and other highly trained professionals. When it comes to their Ukraine mission, no one is more important than John Steinbaugh, a retired Delta Forces medic who served 14 combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan between 2001 and 2012.
After evacuating Americans from Eastern Ukraine during the initial stages of the Russian invasion in 2022, TFA’s mission morphed into a humanitarian relief effort that, along with food, supplies and medicine, has included delivering life-saving trauma kits to people in the towns and villages that are under siege along the 700-mile eastern front of the war.
With many hospitals in the region destroyed and rescue vehicles and medics often hours away, these trauma kits — which include XSTAT, an injectable wound treatment solution co-developed by Steinbaugh that curtails hemorrhaging and stops bleeding — can be the difference in life and death for the severely wounded who are waiting for medical help to arrive.
And that’s where Connor comes in. In 2022 he was approached by a mutual friend of the Antals and asked to help fund the TFA effort.
“Sometimes you do something based on instinct or intuition, and this really resonated with me,” he said. “My gut feeling was that this was really important.”
A year later TFA asked Connor for his financial support again, but this time he first wanted to see where his money was going.
“Like any program where we get involved in a significant way, we’ve got to understand from the ground level exactly what they are doing,” he said. “I wanted to go to Ukraine and see firsthand.”
‘Eye-opening’
Although he has no military background and never had been to Ukraine, Connor has seen more than most people. He viewed the planet Earth from the International Space Station after he piloted the first all-civilian flight there in 2022 and spent 17 days in space.
He’s seen the deepest part of the Pacific Ocean during a record-breaking 35,856-foot dive in the Mariana Trench in a cramped two-man submersible. He jumped from a 15-story hot air balloon that had ascended over 38,000 feet and allowed him to free fall 7.2 miles back to earth.
He’s climbed several of the world’s tallest mountains, navigated some of the planet’s most treacherous white-water rapids and for years raced everything from cars to planes.
Along the way he launched The Greater Dayton School that nurtures the area’s underserved children in a state-of-the-art educational setting at almost no cost to the families. The venture is so successful that other cities in the nation now want him to help start similar schools for them.
And yet, even with all these varied experiences, he said nothing quite prepared him for his first trip to Ukraine:
“It was an eye-opening, inspirational trip, based not only on the incredible work that TFA is doing but also on the resolve of the amazing Ukrainian people. They are ingenious, gritty, tough and persevering. Once you are around them, you understand their fight.”
Connor said when he accompanied TFA into towns to deliver the “blast kits” as he called them and give a few hours of instruction on how to use then, they’d meet 40, maybe 50 people — all women — often in a church.
There were no men in the towns. They were all off fighting or had been killed.
Before TFA left, each woman was given a kit.
“In the last three years they’ve trained over 30,000 civilians,” Connor said. “The women are so focused and attentive and committed in their training; and they’re just so appreciative afterward.”
Snihurivka
This last trip, when Connor and the others were in Mykolaiv, a city in southern Ukraine on the Black Sea, someone pulled them aside and said they should go to a small town — Snihurivka — that was about an hour away.
Like Mykolaiv, it had been captured by the Russians in the initial surge of the war in 2022 and then retaken 10 months later by Ukrainian forces.
When the Russians occupied Snihurivka, they tried to inflict maximum carnage. They destroyed two of the three schools, the railroad station and much of the infrastructure.
According to the Children of War portal, a project supported by the Ukrainian government, some children in the region were abducted by Russian agents.
Transported to Russia, the children were placed in foster homes or adopted by Russian families as part of Putin’s campaign to strip them of the Ukrainian identity.
Ukrinform, the Ukrainian state news agency, reported that after the Russians fled Snihurivka, the bodies of 27 dead civilians — “all with signs of violent death including bullet wounds or explosive injuries” — had been found in individual graves.
When Connor was there he visited the local cemetery which is surrounded by mine fields the Russians left.
In their hasty retreat, the Russians inadvertently left something else in the village that could be more explosive. That’s what Connor and Team Force Antel had been sent to see.
Connor said an official there met them in an abandoned building and brought out a large Russian map. He said few people and no news media had ever seen it.
“It was maybe four feet by six feet, and it was date-stamped 2012, which is critical to know,” Connor said. “It showed Kyiv, the nation’s capital, and detailed how the Russians planned to surround the city and then capture it.
“That was the plan already in 2012!”
“That was two years before the Russians went into Crimea.
“So for anyone to say that Putin doesn’t have an absolute design and commitment to capture the entire country is simply misinformed or naïve.”
‘We need more people to stand up’
Task Force Antal originally was created to evacuate Americans and the Afghan assets who had aided them when the U.S. made its chaotic exit from Afghanistan in 2021.
A year later TFA’s efforts moved to Ukraine.
Connor said his intent on this last trip was two-fold:
“I’m trying to help garner some accurate reporting with the U.S. media about the vital role that TFA is playing.”
He said his team at The Connor Group is putting together some footage it eventually will send to news outlets like CNN and Fox.
“My other purpose was to report back to some people in Washington in a factual basis,” he said. “I just completed that memorandum and sent it to certain U.S. senators and House members.”
He wouldn’t mention specific recipients.
While some higher-ups in the administration may show disinterest for such efforts, he did praise U.S. Rep. Mike Turner, a Republican who represents Dayton and Springfield:
“In my opinion, he’s done a phenomenal job supporting and advocating for Ukraine. We need more people to stand up and say, ‘This is the right thing to do for the world, the E.U., Ukraine and America.”
While his stance might rankle some nativists or Russia-leaning politicians in the government, Connor doesn’t flinch:
“My view isn’t based on bias or political agenda, I just want to put the truth, the facts out there so people can make an informed decision.”
To do that he said he needed to go to Ukraine and observe firsthand what is happening.
And on this latest trip — after flying into Poland, crossing the border and taking all-night train rides across Ukraine — he saw a lot.
‘A generational fight’
In the five days he was there, Connor went to Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, which is 25 miles from Russia. He said a city official took them to a shopping center where, on a recent Saturday afternoon when the place was filled with shoppers, it was hit by two Russian missiles that killed numerous people and injured many more:
“The place had no military value,” Connor said. “The Russians were targeting civilians.”
In Mykolaiv, which is on the Black Sea, he said Russians “mined the entire water system so today there’s no running water, just salt water.”
The night Connor left Ukraine, Russia launched a large wave of missile and drone strikes in Kyiv and killed 25 people.
Two nights later, Russia sent another 600 drone and missile attacks at various cities across the nation — from Lutsk in the west to Zaporizhzhia in the southeast.
As we spoke the other morning at his Miami Twp. office, I told Connor about a photo I’d seen in the New York Times of a pregnant woman on the war’s front lines. One of some 70,000 women fighting for Ukraine, she said she was doing this for herself and her unborn child.
He recounted a moving scene he’d witnessed at the Przemysl Glowny Train Station, which is just 9.3 miles inside Poland from the Ukrainian border, of a mother with her two little girls — both dressed in pink, one pulling a cart with two black bags, the other in her mother’s arms — as they headed back into Ukraine.
Instead of fleeing, they were returning to the fight.
“On the report I sent to Washington, I mentioned a couple of stunning things I observed,” he said.
“First of all, even with the massive increase in Russian bombing, peoples’ resolve has actually increased.
“They believe, universally, that this is a generational fight for the sake not only of them, but of their children and their children’s children.
“They know they can’t lose this war.”
‘Doing the right thing’
Connor related how, on a previous trip, he and the others stopped at a gas station outside Kherson and bought a popular staple for lunch which he then ate while sitting on the curb.
“They call them Road Dogs and they’re very popular there,” he said with a grin.
In a quirky exchange of cultures, according to the Kyiv Post, there are numerous Nathan’s Famous hotdog stands — an extension of the chain that started long ago on Coney Island in Brooklyn — in Socar gas stations across the country.
While Connor was enjoying his Road Dog, he was approached by various Ukrainians who were amazed and appreciative to see an American there, especially when they found out why he was there.
“They are very genuine and authentic in their appreciation of America and Americans,” he said .
“The reality is they don’t need any American soldiers on the ground in their fight. But if we and the EU support them — whether it’s with intelligence, logistics, supplies, equipment or munitions — they will defeat the Russians.”
In the meantime — with no end in sight for a war that already has killed or wounded 1.4 million Ukrainian and Russian soldiers according to the U.S.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies; and has killed or wounded close to 50,000 Ukrainian civilians — Task Force Antal’s work is more critical than ever.
And because the group operates solely on donations, Connor said it can use everyone’s help.
“If you want to make a humanitarian difference in Ukraine, you can contribute to Task Force Antal. (To do so or to learn more, go to: taskforceantal.org.),” he said. “You can also contact your congressman, contact your senator, and simply tell them that you support the Ukrainian people.”
Connor is doing both things.
That’s why he’s giving financial support to TFA and why he’s made trips to the Ukraine front.
And it’s why he proudly flies the Ukrainian flag outside his company headquarters on Springboro Pike.
“I think the cause, the purpose is too important to just sit on the sidelines,” he said. “There are times (in your life) where you need to make a stand. And this is one.
“In our view, this is doing the right thing.”
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