Brooks Newmark has been awarded an Order of Merit by the Ukrainian government for his continued humanitarian efforts in Ukraine. Early in the war, Brooks based himself in Kharkiv, 25 kilometres from the front line with Russian forces, and began evacuating people. He set up his charity, named ‘Angels for Ukraine’, and evacuated in excess of 35,000 women, children and wounded soldiers. In 2023 he focussed on humanitarian aid deliveries to frontline villages, and then in 2024 set up a PTSD training program for the Ministry of Health and Education to train teachers to handle children with PTSD. 

Now, Brooks runs an Ukraine-focused defence company, Trypillian, which develops multi-domain capabilities for Deep Operations. When asked why he set it up, he said: “I got very frustrated with the lack of military support for Ukraine, particularly helping them develop drones that would do deep strikes into Russia. I ended up shifting in late 2024 and early 2025 into developing a defence tech business focused on developing long-distance drones” 

“I got very frustrated with the lack of military support for Ukraine”

When asked what motivated him to get involved in the Ukrainian cause, he said: “Frustration and anger. I went out four days after the war started to the Polish border. There was a huge demand for things to be done, but there was a lack of people coordinating it all. And when I was on the border, I was particularly upset at the fact that a lot of the Ukrainians who I spoke to were being charged a lot of money to get away from Ukraine to places like Poland, Romania, and Hungary. So I said: ‘Look, can you get me some buses, and I’ll go into Ukraine, and I’ll bus people out for free.’ And of course, there was an infinite demand.” 

He added: “None of the big charities were there, I didn’t see the Red Cross for 18 months. It was because of their health and safety protocols, so the big charities ironically didn’t want to be in a war zone. Well, that’s the whole purpose of them? So, everything that I did was a private initiative using mainly my own money, and about 20 friends of mine helped me along the way. And that was the genesis of the early days of Angels for Ukraine.”  

“The one person who really stuck his neck out for Ukraine was Boris Johnson”

Regarding the relationship between the United Kingdom and the people of Ukraine, Brooks says: “There’s a huge amount of goodwill here in Ukraine for the UK. This is because really early on in this war, the one person who really stuck his neck out for Ukraine was Boris Johnson. Boris Johnson, for whatever people may say about his domestic policies, when it comes to Ukraine Boris is incredibly popular here.  I think that goodwill has carried through the full four years, and every prime minister has come here to show their support.  This has been probably one of the few issues in British politics in which there is complete cross-party support.”