The daytime TV talk show host has now visited the war-torn country three times.
Rachael Ray has made three trips to Ukraine, and with each visit she's reminded of the devastation the war-torn country has suffered for the better part of a year now. But also with each visit, Ray is reminded of the people's resiliency in the face of adversity, and it's the people's fortitude that'll continue to fuel her effort to keep their struggle in the spotlight.
The 54-year-old host of The Rachael Ray Show spoke with ET's Kevin Frazier about her most recent trip, in which the daytime talk show host traveled to Lviv, the seventh-largest city in Ukraine and situated around 45 miles east of the Poland border.
"Every trip that I make there -- this was my third -- is just filled with so much emotion," Ray tells ET. "I've never met stronger or more braver people at every age, children to grandparents. These are just the most strong, resilient, brilliant, loving people, and it's hard to be there because you see the ruins of war. You see the amputated limbs and you see face to face and look them eye to eye, people who are displaced. All they want to be is free and free and fair elections and govern themselves and have normal lives and great professions and great lives."
She continues, "And now they have nothing. Their lives are reduced to the contents of plastic bags, and the lucky ones have a suitcase or two and they drag them miles to get to a safer border, to a safe haven or just to the hospital."
Ray's hour-long special about her most recent visit to Ukraine will air Thursday on The Rachael Ray Show. Lviv is where she spent the majority of her time during her most recent trip.
"It's very emotional," she says. "I love it more than anything in the world. It gives me purpose. It fills my heart. And I have wonderful food there and I have a wonderful life among the Ukrainian people, but then I come home and I'm so haunted with their suffering and their pain and I just can't not be with them. So, every trip I take is always about what do we need to do when we come back. It never even occurs to me not to go back."
On her first trip, Ray says she brought a lot of toys, largely due to the fact that she didn't know what it was they needed. She saw the joy on the faces of children, which triggered happy tears on her part. This time around, Ray opened up about visiting a secret safe house where she provided medical and survival kits for those on the frontline of the war triggered by the Russian invasion in February, which forced more than one million Ukrainians to flee the country.
"One of the things we do on every trip is provide these frontline kits that are made to NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] standards for tourniquets," Ray explains. "Seventeen elements in all. I think the most important element is the gel you put below a tourniquet wherever you were injured. If you have shrapnel, if you were in a missile attack, if you were shot, you would put the tourniquets on first and then you put this gel on to keep enough blood going to the injured part of your body so you won't lose that limb or maybe that organ. It buys you a little bit of time."
She continues, "The places where you put together materials for people -- people that are being trained civilians that are now fighters -- these particular safety kits, these things have to move all the time or they are military targets for the Russians. So, it really is working in safe houses. You have to move that facility every few weeks where you build these kits and work. It is an abandoned place. It's a cold, empty warehouse that you work in, where you process those types of materials."
Ray also taught classes in a kitchen she built out at St. John Bosco Orphanage, which also doubles as a vocational training center.
"This is a magic, magic place," an ecstatic Ray says. "It's an orphanage but it's also a school. It's also their house of worship, of course, and it's a vocational training center. They have five different programs for kids and I built out the kitchen with my friend, Giancarlo. We order this stuff through Italy because it was easier to get it from the EU into Ukraine than from America. We upgraded all the electricity so it could handle it. We built out the kitchen with induction stoves 'cause that was the easiest option, and we had to upgrade the electricity to do that, and then we upgraded the ventilation so we could all cook together."
Ray said she cooked beef borsht, Ukrainian style, as well as chocolate cakes. But there was a bit of a hiccup, which lent to a heartwarming moment.
"The chocolate cakes exploded because there was too much batter for the mixer," Ray recalls. "And the children were eating it off the counters and off the side of the bowls. It was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. It was like Christmas. It was better than Christmas."
Ray marvels at the unconditional love children can share even when they've lost it all.
"I just felt, wow, this is great. They've lost so much, they've lost mom and dad, they've lost their homes, but look at the joy that they can still feel and how much they love each other," Ray says. "And they were all hugging each other and sharing and trading toys. They weren't fighting each other. They were sharing and trading and I thought, what exemplary kids. What beautiful little creatures these people are."
Ray's hour-long special on her trip to Ukraine airs Thursday on The Rachael Ray Show.
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