Brooks Newmark and Trypillian: a former British politician supporting Ukraine and investing in Ukraine’s defence technology

By Matthew Parish, Associate Editor

Tuesday 17 March 2026

In the evolving constellation of Western figures who have moved beyond rhetoric into material engagement with Ukraine’s wartime reality, Brooks Newmark occupies a distinctive position. A former Conservative Member of Parliament for Braintree and Minister for Civil Society, his trajectory since 2022 reflects a transition from public office to direct operational involvement in Europe’s most consequential conflict. His work in Ukraine straddles two domains that are often treated separately but are, in practice, deeply intertwined: humanitarian relief and defence innovation.

Newmark’s engagement with Ukraine did not begin with investment, nor with strategy, but with evacuation buses.

In the immediate aftermath of Russia’s full-scale invasion, he relocated to the Polish–Ukrainian border and began organising the movement of civilians fleeing the advancing front lines. From this improvised beginning emerged Angels for Ukraine, a humanitarian initiative that would grow into a substantial logistical network operating across frontline and de-occupied regions. Through this effort more than 35,000 civilians, predominantly women and children, were evacuated from areas under threat, while over 12,000 wounded individuals were transported to hospitals within Ukraine and across Europe. 

These figures, while striking, only partially convey the nature of the undertaking. The charity’s work extended into the provision of humanitarian aid in newly liberated territories, the establishment of regional support hubs, and the development of longer-term rehabilitation and infrastructure assistance programmes. The essential feature of this activity was proximity to risk. It required operating in areas where civilian infrastructure had collapsed and where the front line was not a fixed boundary but a shifting condition.

Yet it is precisely from this proximity that Newmark’s second phase of engagement emerged.

The war in Ukraine has produced a peculiar inversion of the traditional relationship between capital and conflict. Rather than defence industries operating at a remove from the battlefield, Ukraine’s innovative system of defence networks has become deeply embedded within it. Engineers, entrepreneurs and soldiers are often the same individuals, and products are tested not in laboratories but in combat.

It is within this environment that the Anglo-Ukrainian start-up Trypillian (www.trypillian.com) was conceived.

Founded in 2024 by Ukrainian and British veterans and military specialists, the company represents an attempt to formalise and scale the improvisational ingenuity that has characterised Ukraine’s defence effort. Newmark entered not merely as an investor but as co-founder and chairman, leading a $5 million seed round intended to accelerate research, development and international integration. 

The underlying philosophy of Trypillian is straightforward, albeit radical in its implications: military technology should be designed by those who have experienced its absence.

The company’s Ukrainian team is composed largely of veterans, including its chief executive, Ivan Matveichenko, who fought in some of the war’s most intense engagements.  This background informs the company’s focus on practical, survivability-enhancing systems rather than speculative or overly complex solutions. As one internal formulation has it, the objective is not technological spectacle but operational effect.

Accordingly Trypillian’s portfolio concentrates on three principal areas.

First, deep-strike systems — long-range unmanned aerial vehicles designed to penetrate defended airspace and deliver precision effects against high-value targets. These systems are being developed with a particular emphasis on resilience to electronic warfare, including reduced dependence on satellite navigation, a vulnerability that has been repeatedly exposed on the Ukrainian battlefield. 

Secondly, tactical drone families intended for frontline use. These include first-person-view (FPV) systems and bomber drones, optimised for affordability, reliability and rapid production. The emphasis here is not on singular technological breakthroughs but on scalability and availability — ensuring that infantry units possess sufficient quantities of effective tools. 

Thirdly, integrated battlefield communications and autonomous solutions designed to reduce the exposure of personnel while enhancing coordination and lethality. These systems reflect a broader shift in modern warfare towards networked operations in which information, rather than mass, becomes the decisive factor.

What distinguishes Trypillian from more traditional defence firms is its operational model. Rather than constructing large manufacturing facilities, the company adopts an asset-light structure, concentrating on design, finance and project management while leveraging Ukraine’s distributed network of engineers and producers. This approach mirrors the decentralised character of Ukraine’s wartime economy, in which resilience derives from dispersion rather than concentration.

The relationship between this enterprise and Newmark’s earlier humanitarian work is not merely chronological but conceptual.

Humanitarian evacuation and defence technology might appear to occupy opposite moral registers, yet in Ukraine they converge upon a single objective: the preservation of life. The evacuation of civilians addresses the immediate consequences of violence, while the development of more effective defensive and offensive systems seeks to shape the conditions under which that violence occurs. In both cases, the operative question is how to reduce vulnerability — whether of non-combatants or of soldiers at the front.

Newmark himself has framed this transition in terms of commitment rather than charity. Ukraine, in this view, is not a passive recipient of aid but an active partner in a broader transformation of European security. The role of external actors is therefore not to dispense assistance episodically, but to participate in the construction of sustainable capabilities — industrial, technological and institutional.

This perspective aligns with a wider shift in Western engagement with Ukraine’s defence sector. What began as emergency support has increasingly evolved into a recognition that Ukraine is not merely consuming military technology but generating it. Her battlefield has become a testing ground for innovations that are likely to define the future of warfare far beyond her borders.

Trypillian’s ambition reflects this reality. While Ukraine remains its primary market — and indeed its proving ground — the company’s longer-term objective is integration into European defence ecosystems, supplying dual-use technologies to a range of allied states.  In this sense, the enterprise is both national and transnational, rooted in Ukraine’s immediate needs but oriented towards a broader reconfiguration of security architecture.

There is, inevitably, a degree of tension in this model. The proximity to combat that enables rapid innovation also entails risk, both operational and ethical. The boundary between civilian and military domains becomes blurred, and the pressures of wartime urgency can compress the timelines within which technologies are developed and deployed. Yet it is precisely this compression that has allowed Ukraine to outpace more conventional defence procurement systems.

Newmark’s role, situated at the intersection of finance, politics and field experience, is emblematic of a new kind of actor in contemporary conflict. He is neither a traditional policymaker nor a detached investor, but something closer to a hybrid figure — part humanitarian organiser, part venture capitalist, part strategic advocate.

Such figures are likely to become more common as warfare continues to evolve. The Ukraine war has demonstrated that the lines between state and private initiative, between charity and industry, and between national and international effort, are increasingly porous. In this environment effectiveness is measured less by institutional category than by the capacity to deliver tangible outcomes under conditions of extreme uncertainty.

In assessing Brooks Newmark’s work one must therefore look beyond the formal titles he once held. His significance lies not in his past office but in his present activity — in the buses that carried civilians to safety, and in the drones and systems now being designed to ensure that fewer such journeys will be necessary in the future.

The arc of Newmark’s engagement with Ukraine traces a broader truth about this war. Survival, in its many forms, requires both compassion and capability. Ukraine has demanded both — and, in figures such as Newmark and enterprises such as Trypillian, she has found them combined.