countries. and you know, those members of that kitchen, our partner, the owner of that restaurant said, what do you want to do? everybody said, we want to keep cooking. so i m amazed. they said we are food fighters. we are going to feed scaling the people that need a plate of hot food every single day until the ukrainian people go back to the people and the liberty and the democracy that they are standing for. jose, this is this conflict is nearing two months now. i know that you ve been there for pretty much almost all of these two months. what do you take away from this? what are the things that keep you up at night when you are living and experiencing through so much difficulty and the ukrainian people have been suffering so much for so long now. that is why we are here.
is my leader. every person i know, including children, the ones that remain in ukraine and even the ones that are far away in the safety of other countries, everybody is hands on to provide relief to people that need it the most. world central kitchen will be here thanks to many people that support us for the long run. we are not going to allow any ukrainian to go hungry. we re going to be here for the long run and in our way, we are food fighters. we don t solve any problem. sometimes i feel we are only a bandaid, but sometimes a bite of food at a time brings hope and brings that moment where we all hope that peace will be achieved, where ukrainians will again be free. they re not only fighting for freedom, i believe they re fighting for freedom of the democracies of the world. so let s make sure we are next
brave ukrainians. the diplomats have enormous courage. that was political calculation. we had to worry about hostages, et cetera. i don t get they re going to happen but we have to get back in and be on the ground. we need diplomats on the ground with the military liaisons. general mccaffrey, helene cooper, and of course ambassador taylor, and we re going to have john kirby from the pentagon just a bit later in the program. and up next, food fighters after a russian missile strike hit the world center kitchen s operation in kharkiv. chef jose andres gives an update on his mission next. this is andrea mitchell reports on msnbc. this is andrl reports on msnbc.
entire operation not only obviously the biggest number are inside ukraine. we are in six, seven, other countries surrounding ukraine and spain. we have thousands of people working with us. we are doing 320,000 meals a day, already 12 million meals. we have been bring into inside ukraine over 7 million pounds of food. i just came from operation of one of our eleven warehouses where we have an army of ukrainians, women and men, and children making these 25 pound bags, on top of their meals and sandwiches, we are distributed with people ready to cook on their own. i m very proud because i feel one more person in these amazing of food fighters, that they are making sure that anybody that needs food, especially those cities, those towns that were