(NewsNation) — Without the help of people from every part of the country, it would have been much harder for New York to get through 9/11, former Gov. George Pataki said Friday on NewsNation’s “Morning in America.”
While in Ukraine on a trip to aid refugees, Pataki found himself thinking about how they needed the same assistance there, but from those around the globe.
“They’re not going to be able to get through this themselves. On the military side, they need NATO, they need us, they need a lot more help,” Pataki said. “On the humanitarian side, they need the world.”
Pataki, under the auspices of the Governor George E. Pataki Leadership and Learning Center, brought donated items to Ukraine. His group also found a company that makes housing units with heat and electric lights the refugees can move into temporarily. On Monday, Pataki and his team assembled 20 of them, and they plan on sending 10 more to Bucha, a town that has seen widespread and brutal killing.
“We want to do a lot more,” Pataki said. “They need hundreds, thousands of these. We’ve been able to do 30 — much more needs to be done. … We need to get the government, U.S. government, NATO and others to do far more in Ukraine.”
It’s been “encouraging,” Pataki said, to see refugees crossing into Hungary being well taken care of.
Health care, transportation, food and shelter have all been made available to them, he said. A schoolteacher who helped interpret for Pataki and the other volunteers made 1,000 sandwiches with the help of a couple of friends.
“You get across the border into Poland … into Hungary, and to Moldova and to Romania. Everybody’s doing their best to help and they’re doing pretty well,” Pataki said.
It’s another story in Ukraine.
“They’re the ones who don’t have any help. They’re the ones who don’t have housing, who don’t have adequate health care,” Pataki said. “And that’s what we’re trying to provide in Ukraine itself.”