Dnipro, Ukraine-based retreader Yashina Ltd is supporting a local bus company, which was targeted and almost destroyed by a Russian missile attack last autumn by supplying it with free tyres.
Bus to be Donated to Ukrainian Victory Exhibition
The bus operator Igrek was at the time running 200 large capacity Volvo B7 buses serving several bus routes in the city. However, Igrek lost more than 60 vehicles during the attack.
Yashina co-owner Mikhail Prudnikov visited Igrek following the attack a described a scene of devastation:
“Everything is in place at the checkpoint, so I drive forward and find myself in the centre of extreme events. The half-destroyed control room building and the “lunar” soil underfoot, very similar to what I have seen at metallurgical plants near blast furnaces, but with the smell of gunpowder. It contains bolts, nuts, fibreglass, melted metal pieces and parts of someone’s life,“ he wrote.
“The remnants of engines and gearboxes are lined up along the fence, they are also heavily melted and mangled by the high temperature, some of them are being rescued and repaired by the workers at the motor vehicle repair station, and some are completely unusable.“
According to most of the burned vehicles were scrapped, but one burned out bus has been rescued by Prudnikov for an exhibition at his own vintage vehicle museum, Time Machine. The upcoming exhibition, he says, should be called the “History of Victory Exhibition.“
Since the attack all Igrek managed to retain all its local transport routes, and through considerable efforts the company has restored the required number of vehicles.
„It is important to convey to the Pepsi generation that this is not a computer game,“ commented Prudnikov, “but a real war with human casualties and crazy financial losses, and someone has to be held accountable for this.“
In the image, Yashina Managing Director Aleksey Gryshchenko is pictured with Igrik Chief Engineer Sergey Pushkarov.
