I recently saw the attached article and was wondering if you ever maintained contact with your Russian counterparts.

I have thought about reaching out to the Russians I knew, for their thoughts, but they weren’t Russian military, and neither were they from the Soviet era. I’d definitely be interested in learning their perspective of current events.

We’ve shuffled families around between safe houses here and there, but I have little long term hope that they will get out of AFG safely. In a kind of crazy twist, one family who I was planning an overland E&E route for kind of forgot to tell me the wife was 9 months pregnant over the last 6 weeks. She gave birth to their 3rd baby our last Saturday night!

After my chuckling chastising of not knowing she was pregnant and me trying to plan a route to Uzbek, now with a newborn, I recommended to my interpreter (her BIL) on Sunday that they name her faith, or hope, or sunrise- something to keep them motivated in the darkness of the cellar in which they’re now hidden.

I got word back Sunday afternoon that they indeed named her “Wrangaa” or Sunshine (or the Pashto equivalent). So, that was kind of cool.

[Post edited by reconhokie at 09/30/2021 2:26PM]