Kyiv, Ukraine, May 2 (AFP\/APP): With angular welded frames, huge wheels and teeth painted on the front grille, the one-off buggies being built to order for Ukrainian forces on the battlefield resemble props from the “Mad Max” films.<\/p>\n
Tough and durable, buggies can speed over the roughest terrain, carrying weapons and the wounded — and are in demand.<\/p>\n
Ukraine faces a challenge to transport its thousands of troops and evacuate the wounded because vehicles on the front line may only last a matter of weeks.<\/p>\n
These buggies are made by a company set up by 29-year-old Musa, who asked to use a pseudonym for safety concerns because his family lives in Russian-annexed Crimea.<\/p>\n
A doctor by training, he launched the business to help supply Ukrainian battalions, who use public donations to buy them.<\/p>\n
At an industrial site in the capital Kyiv, Musa and his team were busy building the frame of a buggy from metal pipes.<\/p>\n
He revved up another finished vehicle for a hair-raising ride.
\nDriving it up and down steps, it accelerated powerfully before braking just as it seemed about to crash into a wall.<\/p>\n
The buggies weigh 650 kilos (0.65 tonnes) — about half the weight of a normal car — and sell for $6,500 each.<\/p>\n
Musa has named the company Dracarys, a nod to the fire-breathing dragons in “Game of Thrones”.<\/p>\n
They have made “a few” of the vehicles since last summer, he said.<\/p>\n
The buggies are assembled from a hodgepodge of engines and other parts from old secondhand cars, such as Audis and Volkswagens, without complicated electronics, making them easy to repair in the field.<\/p>\n
“These cars, there are so many of them in Ukraine and they’re cheap,” Musa told AFP.<\/p>\n
The buggy he drove has added features such as plastic roll-up side windows to guard against rain and mud and a heater.<\/p>\n
Once the finished vehicle is test-driven, it will go to a battalion called Crimea for use in reconnaissance missions.<\/p>\n
Musa has given up medicine for now and feels he can help the war effort more through the buggies.<\/p>\n
He is a Crimean Tatar, a Muslim group from the peninsula that largely opposed Russia’s annexation and has been harshly punished.
\nRussians “hate freedom,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I want to (go) back to my home. I want to meet my family and it’s my internal motivation to do this.”<\/p>\n
In another workshop in Kyiv’s outskirts, mechanics are also at work for the war effort — on armoured vehicles for medical use.<\/p>\n
The project is spearheaded by Romanian volunteer Radu Hossu, who raised funds among Romanians and Moldovans via his Facebook page.<\/p>\n
It will provide state-of-the-art transportation for a medical battalion in the war-hit eastern Donetsk region.<\/p>\n
Hossu hopes it will then be reproduced more widely.<\/p>\n
His team is creating a complex of different-use vehicles to work in tandem, costing around $165,000.<\/p>\n
They include a hybrid of a Ford truck and a Soviet Gaz chassis that will become an extraction vehicle to remove wounded soldiers from frontline areas even under fire.<\/p>\n
It will be heavily armoured, with huge wheels.
\n“This is basically a Frankenstein vehicle — it doesn’t exist on the planet,” Hossu said.<\/p>\n
A Polish bus has been rebuilt as a mobile hospital where medics can immediately do complex operations.<\/p>\n
Next, a former food truck is being converted into a medics’ sleep and wash area.<\/p>\n
And a towable boat will be able to evacuate the wounded by water.
\nHossu, a former political consultant, has named the project after Oleg Gubal, a Ukrainian soldier who died en route to hospital.<\/p>\n
He knew Gubal personally and wants to stop other families experiencing such grief.<\/p>\n
“If something like this would have existed… I’m not saying Oleg would be alive, but it would have been a chance for him to survive,” Hossu said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kyiv, Ukraine, May 2 (AFP\/APP): With angular welded frames, huge wheels and teeth painted on the front grille, the one-off buggies being built to order for Ukrainian forces on the battlefield resemble props from the “Mad Max” films. Tough and durable, buggies can speed over […]<\/p>\n
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