116. Naive

When the main oncology hospital in Kharkiv was bombed, patients started dying — not from the bombs, but from losing access to their chemotherapy. Ross Skobronski, a Spanish-Ukrainian mathematician who had come to Kharkiv to visit family just one month before the full-scale invasion, watched and waited for someone to respond. No one did. So he did it himself.

Today, Mission Kharkiv serves more than 3,200 oncology patients with full treatment courses across Ukraine, operating a cold chain logistics system out of a bunker four metres underground. Ross and his team of 62 deliver chemotherapy to hospital doors on the day of each patient's session — a level of precision and responsiveness that puts much larger organisations to shame.

In this conversation, Ross talks about how he built Mission Kharkiv from scratch, why his mathematical training shaped his problem-solving more than any humanitarian manual could, and what he sees as the fundamental disconnect in how the sector talks about localization. As the chair of the NGO platform's steering committee in Ukraine, he brings a sharp outsider's perspective on the dynamics between international and national NGOs — and why he doesn't believe power will ever be shared voluntarily.

In this episode:

1. How a $40 million pharmaceutical donation launched Mission Kharkiv
2. Building cold chain logistics in a city under siege
3. Why "naivety" might be the most undervalued quality in humanitarian action
4. The gap between localization rhetoric and reality on the ground
5. Why Ross believes power must be taken, not shared
6. A proposal for a localization accountability framework with measurable indicators
7. What it would take to replicate Mission Kharkiv in other countries

Guest: Ross Skobronski, Founder and Director of Mission Kharkiv and Chair of the Steering Committee of the NGO Platform in Ukraine.