FORMER Tory MP Brooks Newmark has said his charity network has helped some 14,000 Ukrainians to reach safety.

Asked why he got involved, the former minister told GB News in an exclusive interview: “I just sort of felt I couldn’t sit there and do nothing.

“In the first days of the war, I started off at the Polish border moving refugees away from the border and then I decided, actually, where the help is really needed is in Ukraine, and I brought in three buses and started moving people away from Kyiv, where the war started in the Lviv.

“It sort of grew from there and I now have eight hubs around the country, mainly around the war zones.

“I speak with local government officials who say to me, ‘hey, we got 50 people in this area, can you move them?’ and I’ve ended up moving about four orphanages.

“Three weeks ago, I was in Kharkiv and I moved just over 1,000 people out of a Russian controlled area, through 500 metres of anti tank mines.

“Every day is a different day and every day is a different challenge, but I’m not giving up till the war’s over.”

Asked by Mercy Muroki in an interview on GB News about his safety while working with charity Angels for Ukraine, he said: “I don’t think about it, I think maybe the adrenaline keeps me going.

“I was in on the way to this checkpoint I was going to three weeks ago, I heard this big bang in the car and I thought I’d blown a tyre, but then my guy driving me, Igor, said ‘no, no, no – that was a mortar bomb that just landed 70 metres behind us’.

“You sort of don’t think about it and in Kharkiv itself…every day there are bombs landing but, for me at least, I don’t think about it.

“You feel this sort of invisible shield around you and you’re not going to get hurt. I’m probably foolish thinking that, but that’s what keeps me going.”

Mr Newmark said: “I think now that I’ve seen who’s doing what around Europe, I think the UK is probably doing more than most.

“The thing is, for most Ukrainians, they don’t want to come all the way to the UK.

“Most of them want to go next door to Poland where the language is sort of similar, and they can go back so actually lately I think there’s been about 1.5 million Ukrainians who have gone back from Poland into Ukraine.

“There is this two way flow and I think, while people feel safe in the west of Ukraine, which is where I’m bussing people to, I think you’ll probably see more of a flow going back into Ukraine at the moment than going out.

“What I’m doing, though, is taking people away from where the war zones are, into safety within Ukraine. I’m not taking them across the border.”

He added: “I studied history at University, and history tells you if you don’t stop a dictatorship effectively, like Putin, he will just keep pushing boundaries.

“Our concern will be yes, we need to spend some money now but actually if we do nothing now there’s a risk that it could end up being a much bigger war later on.

“We need to draw a line in Ukraine and say enough is enough.

“Give the Ukrainians what they need to fight this war so perhaps we don’t have to get engaged and make sure that we stop Putin in his tracks in Ukraine.”