Miguel Ángel Gutiérrez is an engineer from the Polytechnic University of Madrid. He has been a manager in national and multinational companies in sectors associated with security and information technologies. He was also a Member of Parliament in four legislatures, spokesman for the Ciudadanos group in the Congress of Deputies, spokesman of the Defence Committee, and member of the Spanish delegation to the NATO Assembly. After leaving politics, he became president of the NGO Help to Ukraine, which provides humanitarian aid in Ukraine.
Normally, when a politician leaves public life, he returns to his former job or takes up a senior position in a large company. You have decided to focus on humanitarian aid to Ukraine.
When I was in politics, I was in charge of defence, home affairs, national security, etc. When the Russian aggression against Ukraine started, I was still in politics, so I was following this issue both politically and personally. For me, it has always been clear where we Western democracies had to be and who we had to support. I had been doing that work in politics, with initiatives in support of Ukraine in the defence committee and also in my work in NATO. It was then that I started working with the NGO.
How did you start working with Help to Ukraine?
When the invasion began, many Spaniards were trapped in the areas occupied by the Russians, and these Spaniards asked to leave. But as the Spanish embassy had no means, no one on the ground, it asked for help from other people in Ukraine. Among them was a Spanish businessman, a small businessman, who started to move this issue, contacting me and other people. He called me in March and asked me for help because he knew that I had collaborated with the Ministry of Defence and our armed forces in the evacuation of Kabul, where I managed to get 120 people out of Afghanistan. In the end, with the work of several people, we managed to get 60 Spaniards out of the occupied areas, and then 700 Ukrainians, mostly women and children, who in many cases we brought to different Western countries. It was at that time that the NGO, Help to Ukraine, was created. From then on, I continued to help wherever I could and, as a Member of Parliament, I made my first visit to Ukraine to bring humanitarian aid to civilians very close to the war front, which is where our NGO works. When I left politics in June 2022, I was offered the presidency of Help to Ukraine, and I accepted. It is absolutely voluntary work and neither I nor anyone on the board receives any salary from the NGO.
Since then, I have been to Ukraine twelve more times to bring humanitarian aid. Now, it is more difficult to get the support of Spanish society, because there are other conflicts, and because the war in Ukraine is being forgotten. But we have focused on international cooperation through public bodies or city councils, and we also do partnerships with city councils and twinning between Spanish and Ukrainian cities. We have also specialised in humanitarian demining and will start training emergency units in Ukraine. We are the Spanish partner of United 24, an organisation founded by President Zelenskyy to coordinate all aid efforts in Ukraine, including humanitarian and war relief.
Do you receive any government subsidies?
No, there are no official or state subsidies. It is surprising to see where the subsidies for Spanish international cooperation projects go and to see that nothing goes to Ukraine. Ukraine is not a target country for AECID (Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation).
Why do you work so close to the war front?
Our objective is that 100% of the aid donated by Spanish society reaches its destination: the Ukrainian civilians. Also, it is very dangerous to provide medical assistance to civilians in these areas. For that, we are working on a project to digitise the health systems: that is, the use of medical robots and telemedicine so that doctors in the rearguard can attend to people on the front lines. Civilians in frontline areas are often older people with mobility problems who do not want to leave their homes. The problem is that the doctors cannot get there because they are a priority target for the Russians: every time they see a car or an ambulance they use drones to attack and destroy them. Now, our volunteers carry a medical robot with them to take care of the patient, and in 95% of cases it is not necessary to take the patient to a hospital. We have 22 of these robots and we are seeking funding for many more.
There have been several cases of aid workers being killed by the Russians.
Yes, because we civilian organisations are the ones who go to the front line to help civilians. It is very dangerous, as we saw in the case of Emma Igual, a Spanish aid worker we met there, who was killed in a Russian attack. I have seen perfectly identifiable civilian ambulances shot up and everyone inside killed.
I think you were close to a bombing in Chernihiv.
We had several complicated situations. When the Russians blew up the Nova Kakhovka dam, we were delivering humanitarian aid in Zaporiya with incubators and medical supplies. They asked us for help, so we bought 23,000 litres of water. There was no drinking water there because the dam had been blown up, washing away bodies and animals, and contaminating the water. Once in Kherson, we left the medical supplies at a hospital and went to help some elderly people who had taken refuge on the roof from the rising waters. While we were trying to save them, the Russians started shooting at us with automatic weapons from across the Dnieper, so we had to return to the hospital. The Russians followed us with a drone and fired mortars at our vehicles. It was a miracle that we got out alive.
In Chernihiv, in the summer of 2023, we were visiting an organisation with which we work. It was about 11 o’clock in the morning and we were standing next to a park full of people and families. A rocket hit a theatre in the middle of the park, about 200 metres from where we were standing. There were seven dead and over a hundred wounded. It’s dangerous to be there.
Russia’s bombing of civilian targets is constant, and despite the increasingly unbelievable excuses offered by its propagandists, it is clear that it is looking for a target. What is that target?
Russia always knows exactly where it is firing, just as it does when it fires at military targets. When they shoot at a market, at a hospital, at a school (they have shelled and destroyed many schools), they do so because their main aim is to terrorise civil society and pressure the Ukrainian government to capitulate quickly. The more terror, the more pressure. That’s why their first objective is to kill civilians, doctors, and medics, and secondly aid workers and NGOs, because there is nothing that causes more terror in the population than killing those who are going to help them. That is why I always say that Russia is like a terrorist organisation, because what they are doing is pure terrorism. I have travelled around Ukraine and I have seen time and time again that Russia is trying to create terror. What I have also learnt is that Moscow always lies about everything. That is the first precaution to take with all the news coming out of the Kremlin.
So far, this strategy of terror has failed to break the Ukrainians.
There are two things that Putin did not expect, and that is why his invasion failed. On the one hand, there is the resilience of the Ukrainians, and here I think we should praise the work of Zelensky’s government. Every time there is a bombing, the next day the holes are covered and the streets are paved. In other words, they try to allow people to live their lives as normally as possible. On the other hand, Putin did not count on the unity of Western society, especially the European Union, in supporting Ukraine both economically and militarily. These two factors have thwarted Putin’s plans, but it is also true that, although Ukrainians are very resilient, society does eventually tire.
Putin is playing for time because Russia is not taking its toll in terms of the huge number of casualties it is suffering on the front line, so it does not mind sacrificing thousands of soldiers to gain a minimum amount of ground. It is taking its toll on the Ukrainian government, and the reality is that Ukraine’s resilience is waning because of the fatigue of the population. That is why it is so important that political and social support for Ukraine in the rest of Europe does not wane—because that weakens its position. We must continue to insist that this war is ours, too; that Ukraine is Europe; that they are defending our democracy and freedom—not just theirs—and that, if Ukraine collapses, then the conflict will spread. Russia uses disinformation in the West because it wants to weaken this support and because Putin wants a protracted war. Once the goal of taking Kyiv in three days failed, Russia moved to a strategy of prolonging the conflict, because it knows that its society is not aware of it and will not react.
The Ukrainian offensive at Kursk seems to have made many Russians realise that the ’special military operation’ is not going according to plan.
Yes, Kursk is hurting them badly, as are the drone attacks on Moscow and the attacks on refineries inside Russia. This could not be hidden from the Russian people, and that is why this offensive is so important.
Speaking of disinformation, one of the most common narratives is to blame NATO for the conflict. You worked with NATO. Did NATO take the Russian threat seriously before the invasion?
NATO has been taking the Russian threat seriously for a long time. Russia’s hybrid attacks against NATO countries, such as in the Baltics, have been going on for a long time—not to mention the illegal annexation of Crimea and parts of Donbass in 2014. The narrative blaming NATO is very easy to dismantle, because when one country invades another in defiance of international legality, there is only one culprit. Ukraine had also handed over its nuclear weapons to Russia in an agreement that Putin has been violating since 2014, and Russia circumvents agreements whenever it feels like it. Russian imperialism and Putin’s desire to go down in history as the new Tsar go back a long way, and this should not be forgotten when analysing the conflict.
Like other NATO countries, Spain has donated military equipment to Ukraine. The best-known case is that of the Leopards, which were in a bad state. Is Spain prepared for a conflict?
They were in a deplorable state and were completely dismantled in Zaragoza. The Ukrainians often ask me why Spain doesn’t supply a Patriot battery, but the problem is that we don’t have one. Now they are investing, but after the 2008 crisis and Zapatero, and then the arrival of the PP, nothing has been done for the defence of Spain. Our material is old, obsolete, and in bad condition, so we have nothing to deliver. I wish we had enough material to donate to Ukraine, but we don’t. Spain is an economic power in the EU, but on a military level it is very poor because there has been no investment.
How has your experience in Ukraine changed you?
When you see what war is like, reality hits you and you realise that it has nothing to do with the movies. War is much more dramatic because it’s not just the soldier who fights, but everything around him: civil society, the villages where people live, and the old people who don’t want to leave their homes because they have nowhere to go. When you’re hit by that, it changes your life. You would have to be miserable for it not to change your life and the way you understand your priorities, what is important and why it is important. In the consumer society that we live in, where we devour information in minutes and move on to something else, we don’t see the reality—the importance of having a friend, a colleague, a neighbour, or someone who puts their life on the line to be there. Those are the heroes; and, when you are there, you recognise them and it affects you.
