With chunky tires, a low chassis, and painted teeth up front, Musa’s refurbished ‘quads’ They look like they’re straight out of the movies. Mad Max.
But this Sturdy and fast ATVs are in great demand among the Ukrainian army. Even on the most delicate terrain, can carry weapons and evacuate wounded from the front lines.
Ukraine is facing a big challenge: it needs as many vehicles as possible to transport units and casualties, but the service life of these machines near the front may be limited to a few weeks.
Muse29, who did not want to give his full identity because his family lives in the Russian-controlled and annexed Crimean peninsula, launched his small business to supply the Ukrainian army with reassembled ‘quads’.
This example illustrates the increasingly strong links between private industry and the military, at a time when kyiv needs the maximum number of teams to successfully launch an offensive in the east and southand recover the territories occupied by Russia.
The quads produced by Musa and his team they weigh 650 kilograms, approximately half that of a normal car, and sell for 6,000 euros ($6,600) each.
Its manufacture is a beautiful mixture of ingenuity: before being assembled, most parts are salvaged from vintage carswithout complex electronics, to facilitate field repair.
Adapted to the terrain
“There are many such vehicles in Ukraine and they are not expensive,” Musa told AFP.
The ‘quad’ that just passed through his hands moments before was also adapted to the off-road conditions of the battlefield. His final name is Dracarys, the code word used to command the dragons on the hit series “Game of Thrones” to breathe fire.
After passing tests outside kyiv, the vehicle will be sent to a battalion called “Crimea” for reconnaissance operations..
In the first line, “the useful life of these vehicles is two or three weeks,” explains Musa. “It’s just a metal set. What matters are the lives ”of the soldiers, he continues.
A doctor by profession, he temporarily left medicine to help his country with these quadricycles.
“I want to go home. I want to see my family and that is my personal motivation, ”she says to explain her commitment.
unique
In another workshop on the outskirts of kyiv, mechanics work on the manufacturing of vehicles for medical purposesa project led by a Romanian volunteer, Radu Hosu.
The initiative raises funds on social networks and plans to assemble several vehicles for around 150,000 euros ($165,000).
The goal is to enable frontline nurses in the Donetsk region (east) to benefit from high-performance means of transport for their missions.
One of them is a mixture between the cab of a truck and the chassis of a Soviet military vehicle that will be used to extract the wounded from the front, it will be armored and have wide tires.
“It’s a Frankenstein-style vehicleHosu smiles. “It doesn’t exist anywhere else.”
He also created a armored mobile hospital made from a Polish buswhere nurses will be able to operate on the injured with modern medical equipment.
In addition, it has a front mesh to limit impacts on the windshield.
This vehicle will be placed 15 kilometers from the front line to receive the wounded and provide first aid.
Hossu was a political consultant and named his humanitarian project Oleg Goubal in memory of a murdered Ukrainian soldier he knew.
Once all the vehicles are ready, Hossu will continue his commitment and go to the eastern Donbas region to help evacuate the wounded from the devastated city of Bakhmut.
(With information from AFP)
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Source-www.infobae.com