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Violence in the forecast By Morgan Rothborne Aug 25, 2022 01:00 AM A A Medford native Scott Eastman departed Saturday on his second trip of the year to deliver supplies to Ukraine Scott Eastman is returning to Ukraine Aug. 20 to bring supplies to soldiers and civilians. [Jamie Lusch / Mail Tribune] Editor’s note: This is the second installment in a three-part series about local people traveling to Eastern Europe to help Ukrainians in need. “The terrible thing about being a forecaster is that you think in probabilities,” said Medford native Scott Eastman, who embarked Saturday on his second trip this year to Ukraine to deliver supplies. Eastman is an academic who works with Good Judgment Inc., a company born of a government-funded project to enlist people like himself in forecasting global events for the United States and other “friendly” governments. His brown eyes lit up by his brown shirt and the light of a Medford coffee shop the week before he left, Eastman described May 13, 2022, the day he and his colleagues went over the border from Poland into Lviv, Ukraine, to deliver supplies to Ukrainian soldiers and civilians. “These are basic things: knee pads, two-way radios, binoculars — things they don’t have,” he said. Eastman had been in Poland for work, he said, when he and two colleagues decided to do something to help in Ukraine. He went to Poland prepared, he said. He brought supplies with him, but he wasn’t sure whether he would be able to get into Ukraine. His colleagues, younger than himself, were eager to go. Relying on his unique expertise coupled with his age and experience, he planned the venture cautiously. “I was in the far west of the country, away from the fighting, but I have contacts with people who go to the front lines,” he said. He started with a Ukrainian contact he knew by name to set up a drop, but from there it went in a chain of phone numbers without names, only information for where to meet. The compartmentalized information keeps everyone safe, he explained. “Every single crossroad going in (to Lviv) was barricaded. You have hedgehogs (anti-tank obstacles), like in World War II when you see the Normandy landings. At major roads there would be pillboxes — places for soldiers,” he said. Working with his knowledge of probabilities, he knew train stations and military buildings could be targets for Russian missiles. His driver took them to a train station, in case he wanted to photograph or talk to the refugees, but he told her to move on for the safety of the group. He said that in Lviv, the Polish border and NATO territory were too close for Russians to use dumb missiles, because they would probably not risk poking NATO. The probability was high the Russian military would hit only strategic targets with guided missiles that far west. The day he and his colleagues went in — May 13 — Russian missiles came from the Black Sea, hitting a military target in Lviv. But his predictions kept them safe. The group was able to deliver not only the military supplies he brought but some medical supplies, things like bandages they were able to pick up in Poland. “Unfortunately, it was very last-minute,” he said, adding he wished he could have brought more medical supplies. Eastman returned Aug. 20 to bring more supplies into Ukraine. This time, he stocked up in the U.S. while visiting his parents in Medford. With the help of friends, he stockpiled vital medical supplies such as tourniquets. “Before there was widespread use of those, I believe the number of people dying in the Vietnam War from traumatic injuries was something like 7%; in Afghanistan and Iraq it was 2%,” he said. Eastman grew up in the Rogue Valley. He attended North Medford High School, and his father taught there. But he’s been away from the valley for a long time, he said, his English lilting on a slight Romanian accent he has acquired from years of speaking the language. He went to Romania to work on a documentary photography project in 2003. While working to capture the unique rural life of the country famous for Dracula, he met his future wife. “Her family had a factory making men’s suits. That doesn’t move very easily, so I thought it was easier for me to stay,” he said. Eastman has followed his interests down many paths. An undergraduate degree in English literature led to a master’s in fine art photography, leading him to photograph and ultimately settle in Romania. Teaching American studies at Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu led him in 2013 to work with Good Judgment. Living in Sibiu, Romania, Eastman saw refugees as they moved through the country. Romania has been welcoming hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, he said, though not as many as have gone to Poland. The ties of cultural and historical kinship between Poland and western Ukraine are stronger, he said. Ukraine is about the size of Texas, he explained, while Romania is roughly the same size as Oregon, perched beneath Moldova, Romania shares a coastline with Ukraine along the Black Sea. “I’m closer to the front lines at home in Sibiu than I was in Lviv,” he said with a laugh. It was not only his proximity to the war that inspired him to help, he said. His work gave him a window into what it was going to be like on the ground. Eastman started working as a forecaster in 2013, working with his colleagues at Good Judgment on questions the National Security Administration felt were difficult to answer. Questions like, will Putin invade Ukraine? Will there be a refugee crisis, and where will the tide of fleeing people go? Sometimes government analysts sit with the same information for too long, he said, and can develop a narrow way of seeing the question. Even though he and his colleagues don’t have access to top-secret data, he said, they have been rated as 68% more accurate than the average CIA analyst. In early November 2021, he said, the Russian war question was something he had to deal with very seriously. He and his colleagues studied Russian troop movements near the border with Ukraine. “They (Russia) said, ‘Oh, it’s a training exercise.’ So you say, ‘OK, is it?’ And after they moved the troops back, they left their equipment there. Then they moved their blood supplies. That has a shelf life,” he said. “I have worked in refugee flows before,” he said, “and if you know two or three months in advance, you can plan things out; it works better.” He and his colleagues advised Romania and Poland to be ready for refugees. “This is where forecasting can matter. You can’t always change the future, but you can sometimes have a better result,” he said. Russia is stalled now, he said, its military is not moving through the country the way it once was, and the West is prepared to hold the line. But, he cautioned, the sad thing about wars is they usually last longer than people expect them to. Reach Mail Tribune reporter Morgan Rothborne at [email protected] or 541-776-4487. Follow her on Twitter @MRothborne.