HOME > AFP-JIJI PRESS NEWS JOURNAL > Article
Building 'Mad Max' vehicles for Ukraine's fighters
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 the roughest terrain, carrying weapons and the wounded -- and are in demand.
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.
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.
A doctor by training, he launched the business to help supply Ukrainian battalions, who use public donations to buy them.
At an industrial site in the capital Kyiv, Musa and his team were busy building the frame of a buggy from metal pipes.
He revved up another finished vehicle for a hair-raising ride.
Driving it up and down steps, it accelerated powerfully before braking just as it seemed about to crash into a wall.
The buggies weigh 650 kilos (0.65 tonnes) -- about half the weight of a normal car -- and sell for $6,500 each.
Musa has named the company Dracarys, a nod to the fire-breathing dragons in Game of Thrones.
They have made a few of the vehicles since last summer, he said.
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.
These cars, there are so many of them in Ukraine and they're cheap, Musa told AFP.
The buggy he drove has added features such as plastic roll-up side windows to guard against rain and mud and a heater.
Once the finished vehicle is test-driven, it will go to a battalion called Crimea for use in reconnaissance missions.
Musa has given up medicine for now and feels he can help the war effort more through the buggies.
He is a Crimean Tatar, a Muslim group from the peninsula that largely opposed Russia's annexation and has been harshly punished.
Russians hate freedom, he said.
I want to (go) back to my home. I want to meet my family and it's my internal motivation to do this.
- 'Frankenstein vehicle' -
In another workshop in Kyiv's outskirts, mechanics are also at work for the war effort -- on armoured vehicles for medical use.
The project is spearheaded by Romanian volunteer Radu Hossu, who raised funds among Romanians and Moldovans via his Facebook page.
It will provide state-of-the-art transportation for a medical battalion in the war-hit eastern Donetsk region.
Hossu hopes it will then be reproduced more widely.
His team is creating a complex of different-use vehicles to work in tandem, costing around $165,000.
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.
It will be heavily armoured, with huge wheels.
This is basically a Frankenstein vehicle -- it doesn't exist on the planet, Hossu said.
A Polish bus has been rebuilt as a mobile hospital where medics can immediately do complex operations.
Next, a former food truck is being converted into a medics' sleep and wash area.
And a towable boat will be able to evacuate the wounded by water.
Hossu, a former political consultant, has named the project after Oleg Gubal, a Ukrainian soldier who died en route to hospital.
He knew Gubal personally and wants to stop other families experiencing such grief.
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.
(2023/05/22 17:19)
Click Here for Japanese TranslationAFP-JIJI PRESS NEWS JOURNAL
- 05/26 17:13 Australia told to shoot kangaroos before they starve
- 05/26 17:12 Musk's Neuralink says cleared for human test of brain implants
- 05/26 17:11 US Navy probe finds major problems with SEAL training
- 05/26 17:10 Peru seizes cocaine bricks wrapped in Nazi insignia
- 05/26 17:09 Animal rights activists 'rescue' lambs from farm on royal estate
- 05/26 17:04 South Korea hails successful launch of homegrown rocket
- 05/25 19:35 Miami zoo's meet-a-kiwi scheme ruffles feathers in New Zealand
- 05/25 19:31 $6 mn raised to preserve Nina Simone's childhood home
- 05/25 19:26 Barcelona veteran Alba leaving club after 11 years
- 05/25 19:21 'Wide open' for business-- Russia makes play for Gulf money
- 05/25 19:08 French defender Le Normand obtains Spanish nationality
- 05/25 19:00 US top health official sounds alarm on child social media use
- 05/24 17:36 Netflix expands password-sharing crackdown worldwide
- 05/24 17:33 Police search Portugal reservoir in Madeleine McCann case
- 05/24 17:32 Mexico raises alert level as volcano ejects smoke, ash, lava
- 05/24 17:31 Taiwan says last wartime 'comfort woman' dies at 92
- 05/24 17:29 New Zealand fights to save its flightless national bird
- 05/24 17:25 Spain arrests seven over Vinicius racism incidents
- 05/23 17:05 Climate-- 'dangerous heat' could afflict billions by 2100
- 05/23 17:03 Harvard study finds implicit racial bias highest among white people
- 05/23 17:00 New Zealand sheep outnumber people less than 5 to 1, a record low
- 05/23 16:58 Macron makes first French presidential visit to Mongolia
- 05/23 16:56 Godard's afterlife begins at Cannes
- 05/23 16:53 Spain opens investigation into racist abuse of Vinicius
- 05/22 17:22 Private mission carrying Saudi astronauts launches to ISS
- 05/22 17:20 Guitar smashed by Nirvana's Kurt Cobain sells for nearly $600,000
- 05/22 17:19 Building 'Mad Max' vehicles for Ukraine's fighters
- 05/22 17:18 Paris sees success in bringing Zelensky to G7
- 05/22 17:16 'I love being older', says Harrison Ford as he retires Indiana Jones
- 05/22 17:14 After SpaceX, NASA taps Bezos's Blue Origin to build Moon lander
- 05/19 18:43 London show explores sari's 21st century reinvention
- 05/19 17:15 DNA study of famed US sled dog shows what made him so tough
- 05/19 17:12 India's top court upholds bull-taming festival
- 05/19 17:11 Turks in Germany hope for citizenship law overhaul
- 05/19 17:07 Italy flood deaths rise to 13 as thousands wait to come home
- 05/19 17:06 Nadal pulls out of French Open, set to end career in 2024