Ukraine-American Investment & Development Fund

07/31/2023

Over two weeks across Ukraine opened our eyes and gave us an unprecedented perspective of what’s going on there on the ground. We met incredible people and witnessed Russian atrocities first hand. The spirit of our Ukrainian partners made us even more motivated to work harder on making UAID Fund a success!

Before departing from our UAID Ukraine Real Estate tour, our team arrived again in the beautiful historic city of Lviv and had a super productive meeting with the Lviv Oblast officials in their historic office building.

We have learned that there are many real estate sites in the Lviv Oblast (Lviv State) that need redevelopment and there are real opportunities for PPP projects, some of which we hope to pursue.

One more stop at the Lviv City Hall and an amazing brunch at their Lviv building cafe that dates back to mid 1800’s. We checked in and shared a meal with the Liberal Ukraine Lviv’s team also and made a long list of projects to follow up on together.

We truly want to thank all involved for the amazing Ukrainian hospitality and also thank our Warsaw team - Mariusz Markiewicz and Marek Bomze- for an incredible job with logistics and their commitment to our cause.

Now we go back to Texas with a stack of promising projects to work on and will focus on taking our UAID fund to the next level.

Slava Ukraini and let’s make some good deals between our US investors, Ukrainian developers, NGO’s and their local communities.

07/26/2023

One of the local real estate developers in downtown Bucha, a Kyiv suburb, had some of his near-complete condo buildings damaged by Russians last spring.

His name is Victor. After Russians got expelled from Bucha, Victor stared cleaning up the mess they left behind and turned his condo sales center into a self made local war museum, where he displays Russian military artifacts from the recent invasion.

While visiting with him in Bucha this Saturday morning and touring his museum, we ran into Bohdan. He was painting Russian artillery shells with colorful paints and turning them into art with help for local volunteers.

We learned that last March, Bohdan was hiding in the basement of his home from Russians while his home got shelled and completely collapsed.

Bohdan was buried in the basement for full two weeks until locals discovered him and were able to rescue him. He survived on very limited water and food supplies he had with him while hiding from the Russians.

Our UAID team thought about preserving some of the 125 mm gun shells Bohdan paints and sell them at auction in Texas to raise money for the museum. If any of you have an interest in this idea, please reach out to Allan or Pawel.

Mariusz Markiewicz, our Polish director may take them to Warsaw and do an auction there also.

07/24/2023

There is hope!

We toured the Hero City of Irpin with real heroes. The Hon. Mayor Markushyn and his staff gave us a tour of the place where the Mayor and his 200 volunteers stopped a 60 mile long Russian column in the outskirts of Kyiv in March 2022.

We were totally shocked to see the progress City of Irpin has made in cleaning up, de-mining and rebuilding its infrastructure since those tragic days.

33 Ukrainians, citizen volunteers died in front of Giraffe Mall in Irpin that was totally destroyed by Russians.

Holding an American and Ukrainian flag together in front of Giraffe with the heroes was once in the lifetime moment for our UAID team.

We are even more motivated to find ways to deploy US capital to work and find profitable yet impactful projects to work on. We are slowly revealing a vision and getting some clarity on how to make it all work. Stay tuned for more updates and our new ideas.

07/20/2023

On Tuesday, the UAID team met with the representatives of Ukraine Invest at the main Government House in Kyviv.

Ukraine Invest is the largest national investment agency in Ukraine. They're currently working on reconstruction of the country while leading all the efforts on education of foreign governments and NGO’s.

Thank you Ukraine Invest for your time and support! We will be back with more concrete investment plans soon.

07/18/2023

On Monday, Allan and Pawel were hosted by the Deputy Mayor Mykhailyna Skoryk of the City of Bucha and Oleksiy Martyniuk of
Bucha Agency of Regional Development.

We toured many of the war ravaged buildings and destroyed sites, but the most somber one was the visit to a church in Bucha where Russian soldiers murdered and buried 116 civilians (including 33 women and young children) in a mass grave behind the St. Andrew’s Orthodox Church.

Afterwards, we went to the church‘s basement (a Ukrainian tradition) to light some candles in the memory of the innocent victims. This was a very emotional and private moment so we decided not to post any photos of us doing so. We are so sorry to all the victims of the Russian federation’s atrocities.

We also met the local real estate developers whose projects and personal homes were completed destroyed by the Russian scums.

07/14/2023

Yesterday, we met with the City of Lviv Economic Development Team and with the Ukraine Business Community Club to discuss the needs of the city and local projects in order to understand the challenges that local and regional businesses are facing during the war economy.

We also discussed the new business community hub project, the proposed medical hub and a need for co-working and co-warehousing facilities in the Lviv market.

Lviv is also working on their second new industrial park to be located in the special enterprise zone.

07/14/2023

07/13/2023

Yesterday, we met with the Liberty Ukraine Foundation in Lviv to deliver medical supplies that we brought with us from Austin. We met with the young staff who are all local volunteers working around the clock here in Lviv to receive and distribute as many supplies as possible to the field military hospitals and beyond.