Eduardo González
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, attended yesterday in the town of Herencia, in Ciudad Real, the ceremony of delivery of two ambulances donated by Spain to Ukraine and that were conditioned and medicalized by a Castilian-La Mancha company from two armored vehicles of the Spanish Army.
Albares visited the facilities of the company Tecnove in Herencia to oversee the adaptation of two military vehicles in armored medical ambulances that “will travel to Ukraine soon,” as indicated by the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) in a press release. Among the attendees were also the Ukrainian ambassador in Spain, Serhii Pohoreltsev, the mayor of Herencia, Sergio García-Navas, and the president of Tecnove, Eusebio Ramírez.
The two 6×6 Medium Wheeled Armored Vehicles (BMRs), which had not been used before, were acquired by AECID to be converted into Advanced Life Support ambulances equipped with medical and electromedical equipment. The two vehicles are equipped with oxygen, immobilization and rescue equipment, cardiorespiratory monitors, defibrillator and CPR board, splints, collars, equipment for infusion of medicines, equipment for transferring patients in different situations, electrical installation for the equipment, a stretcher cart and a paddle stretcher to pick up patients on the ground without causing them harm.
The donation of these armored vehicles responds to a request made by the Ministry of Health of Ukraine to the European Union within the framework of the European Civil Protection Mechanism and its use will be exclusively humanitarian and will be focused on the evacuation of patients and medical care, informed the AECID. In this regard, Albares told journalists that the shipment of the two armored ambulances also responds to a request made last summer by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Dmytro Kuleba, and said that the two vehicles will arrive in that country “in a very short time” by means of a transport that “is organized and co-financed jointly with the European Commission through the European Civil Protection Mechanism”.
“The objective of Spanish aid has always been to offer adequate protection to the Ukrainian population, as well as the delivery of basic necessities, whether in Ukraine or in the communities hosting people displaced by the conflict,” Albares declared. Therefore, he specified, this shipment is part of the “support that Spain provides to Ukraine in all sectors”, a support that will last “as long as necessary until Ukraine is definitively what it has always been: a free, independent, sovereign country that can live in peace”.
These two armored ambulances, Albares pointed out, will join the “almost 50 million euros that Spain has already delivered to Ukraine in humanitarian aid and the 250 million euros that we have contributed in reconstruction aid, for a total of some 300 million euros, which at this moment constitutes the largest cooperation and aid program that Spain has ever provided to a single country in the world”. “We will maintain the aid as a sign of the solidarity with Ukraine not only of the Government, but of the Spanish people,” he added.
According to AECID, the aid provided by Spain to Ukraine in the last two years exceeds 46 million euros, which represents “the largest humanitarian response in emergencies for a single country in the history of Spanish Cooperation.”
