The wife of a Navy veteran turned medical volunteer who died in Ukraine paid tribute to her “selfless” husband on Saturday.
“I can’t imagine our lives without him. He loved him so much and he loved me so much,” Alex Potter said of her husband, Pete Reed, in a statement.
“Everything he did was always for the benefit of others,” she said, adding that his “great personality was layered on top of the fact that he was also incredibly sensitive, loving and brave in every way of the word, someone who helped us myself and others through incredibly difficult times, putting the needs of others before their own.”
Reed, 33, was killed Thursday “while providing aid” in the town of Bakhmut in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, Global Response Medicine, the group he founded to help provide emergency medical care, said in a statement. people displaced by war or disaster. Friday.
The city and its surroundings have become a focal point of the war and both Ukraine and Russia have suffered heavy losses in their attempts to secure it.
Control of Bakhmut would likely be seen as a significant, if costly, victory for the Kremlin, which has suffered repeated setbacks on the battlefield and rare signs of unrest at home as the war nears the one-year mark.
“We can confirm the recent death of a United States citizen in Ukraine,” a State Department spokesman said Saturday. “We are in contact with the family and providing all possible consular assistance.”
After serving twice in Afghanistan as an infantryman with the 3rd Battalion Marines between 2007 and 2011, Potter said the New Jersey native Reed founded Global Response Medicine in 2017, in response to the Battle for Mosul between militants. ISIS and forces led by the Iraqi army.
She added that they met on her birthday in November 2016 after she arrived in the country.
Reed’s work in Iraq was covered by NBC News’ chief foreign affairs correspondent Richard Engel, who paid tribute to him on Twitter. “He was dedicated, brave, funny, charismatic and caring,” Engel wrote. “A true humanitarian. A loss to all who knew him and to the many he helped.”
Potter said Reed graduated from paramedic school earlier this year.
“We were ardent advocates of each other’s hopes and dreams,” he said.
amita kelly and abigail williams contributed.
