00:00Well, even with their soldiers entering a fifth year of war, many Ukrainians haven't given up hope
00:05and ordinary members of society are still rallying to help the war effort where they can.
00:10That's the case for Ivan Alexei, who, along with Roman Herpaculo, founded Car for Ukraine,
00:16a volunteer organization that sources cars, mostly from outside Ukraine,
00:20and then upgrades and delivers them to the front lines.
00:23They're either transformed into armored vehicles or used for things like food and aid delivery
00:28or evacuation of wounded troops.
00:31Let's take a look at a clip from the organization.
00:34So we collected a bit more this week, and we send in seven vehicles to the front line to them.
00:41We're going to run you through each one of them.
01:04We can cross live to Lviv in Ukraine now to speak to Ivan Alexei.
01:08Thank you very much for being with us on France 24.
01:11What gave you the idea to start Car for Ukraine?
01:15Is it all linked to your line of work before the war started?
01:21First of all, thank you for having me here.
01:24Yeah, not really.
01:25It wasn't related to this at all.
01:28I was more involved in esports and actually working with Team Vitality,
01:33one of the most famous French team in CSGO.
01:37But yeah, it was mainly the need and the requirements from the front
01:41that has become the core reason why we decided to work on this project.
01:48And so you were in contact with commanders on the front line
01:52and then addressing their needs directly?
01:56Yeah, basically we, I mean, as Ukrainians, right,
02:00we have a lot of connections and a lot of people reach out to us
02:02and ask for the support, including normal soldiers, pilots,
02:08as well as some higher commanders who are, for example,
02:12planning their resources, they're planning their restructuring,
02:16they are maybe scaling their operations from a company to a battalion,
02:20from battalion to a brigade, and to do it, to grow rapidly.
02:24They might need some support, not only from government,
02:27but also from ordinary people, including people from France
02:32who are just giving up their vehicles and we get it to them.
02:35Yeah, well, tell us more about the kinds of people
02:38who are donating their cars.
02:39Are they mostly coming from European countries like France
02:43or others as well?
02:46Yeah, so mainly the vehicles are coming from the UK
02:50and then goes Germany, Netherlands and France.
02:54France, out of these four, is the least.
02:57And I think it's because we don't speak French, to be honest.
03:01I think that's a big boundary for us,
03:04that we don't have a communication way to talk to audience within France
03:10or maybe Switzerland and Luxembourg or some other, Belgium, excuse me.
03:16That way we would, I think, capture more from France.
03:20But these are the people and these are all ordinary people,
03:23you know, people who are working on a farm
03:25or people who have some businesses.
03:27We even had a guy from Belgium who is a part of like a monarchy
03:33of a pretty wealthy family.
03:35And he's just basically designating his life now to helping regular people.
03:40And what about from the United States?
03:45Well, US is quite far away,
03:47so it's a bit harder to get the vehicles from the United States,
03:50though we had quite a lot of offers.
03:53But when it comes to campaigns,
03:55so Car Free Crane basically has two lines of how we get vehicles.
03:59It's either people donate them directly
04:01or we make a campaign where we raise money for the vehicle.
04:05And in terms of donating, US, well, I have to give them credits.
04:09They are very active.
04:10I would say nearly half of the donations that we get,
04:14they come from the US.
04:15They're extremely active.
04:16So those who care, they care very well, I can say.
04:21Well, tell us more about the process from when you receive these cars.
04:24How long does it take you to upgrade them?
04:26And how many people are working with you to do this?
04:31Well, so far, we have nearly 30 people who are involved on more or less daily basis,
04:37though most of them are volunteers.
04:40But besides that, we have quite a lot of people as a part of our community
04:44from France, from Belgium, from UK, from Germany, from Netherlands.
04:49It could be, I would say, up to 200 people
04:52where I have personal contacts of each one of them.
04:55If I need to get a vehicle from Denmark, for example,
04:58I already have some contacts I can reach out to.
05:01It takes about two, three weeks to sort of work on vehicles,
05:05to fix them, you know, to install armor,
05:07we install additional metal plate, and then very important to service them.
05:14So when we give the vehicles to the soldiers,
05:17we make sure that they're in good shape
05:19and the guys can rely on them for quite some time.
05:24Well, as we've been reporting,
05:25Ukraine is now entering its fifth year of war with Russia.
05:29Do you ever feel fed up?
05:36I think there is a study that is talking about the soldiers on the front line,
05:42that the soldiers burn out, you know, in the first,
05:46I don't remember, I think it's like two or three months.
05:49So that's after that time, you're already like burned, and that's it.
05:53But we've been through this war for more than four years,
05:56and at that stage, it's not that you have like a passion,
06:00and it's driving you.
06:01It's more like it's growing into the system,
06:04and you just adjust to the system,
06:07and it's just your new normality, and you go on.
06:12So whether we're fed up,
06:15I don't know what that means, to be honest,
06:17because it's just a way of life for us.
06:21There's no way we can, as Zansky rightfully say,
06:23we cannot just, you know, accept any terms just for it to stop,
06:28because we've already lost so far.
06:30So the opportunity cost for us, speaking in microeconomics terms,
06:35it's just, it just doesn't worth it.
06:38For you, at least for a volunteer organization,
06:41you're definitely keeping up your efforts.
06:44How important are these cars for the front line,
06:47for people fighting in Ukraine?
06:52Today, vital, you know, logistics is the cornerstone of the war.
06:58If you don't have logistics, you will lose the war.
07:00So it started like that at the beginning of the war.
07:04We needed more vehicles,
07:06because we didn't have that many soldiers.
07:08Now we need a lot of vehicles,
07:10because there are FPV drones that are very, very targeted,
07:13like very precise,
07:15and they destroy quite a lot of vehicles every day on the front line,
07:19for which you require more and more resupplies.
07:23And I'd also like to get...
07:24Yeah, vital, like you see on the video you were just showing,
07:28is that it was evacuation,
07:29like a very good example that when you get shelled
07:32and you have like a good 4x4,
07:34you get in, you know, you jump in, you get out.
07:38Like they literally save lives in many cases,
07:41or like this one, it's very sensitive,
07:42but it was actually from like first few months of the war,
07:46it was a Toyota Hilux,
07:47it's like a very, very good, reliable beast,
07:49you know, with its own legacy.
07:52And it's like, it's getting people out there,
07:54and it drives.
07:57And I'd just like to ask for your personal view
08:00on the C-sub-fire negotiations that are going on.
08:04How do you or other people around you see those?
08:07Do you agree with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's stance?
08:14I would say a lot of talks about this peace negotiation is noise.
08:20So it's to show that, you know, we're trying something,
08:25and sometimes it's like a one-man show,
08:27and we're trying to make sure that Trump is happy,
08:32that Trump sees that everyone is trying,
08:34so we're not sort of ignoring his big efforts.
08:38And in fact, he does try a lot,
08:39but at the end of the day,
08:42a lot of it is just, you know,
08:44a meeting for the sake of the meeting,
08:46and we are not solving the route.
08:48The route is a country that has its goal
08:52to basically destroy another country.
08:55And when another country says, you know,
08:57we want to exist, that's a conflict of interest.
09:01Do you feel confident that Ukraine
09:03can win the war anytime soon?
09:07I don't know what winning the war actually means in this case.
09:11What I am confident of is that
09:16we have a good technology backlog.
09:22Like, we're a pretty smart country.
09:25We have a lot of very interesting companies
09:29that are working on technology
09:31where we can get some edge.
09:33And this is like a kinetic energy
09:37that we've been, you know, keeping and developing,
09:40and at one point it will, you know, it will go out.
09:44And at that point, we will see a lot of interesting things
09:47that our army is doing,
09:49that our smart engineers are working on.
09:52So I would say we have some potential,
09:56we have some momentum
09:59that we can still use to our advantage.
10:04All right.
10:04Ivan Oleksy, co-founder of Car for Ukraine,
10:07thank you very much for your time speaking with us today.
10:10Thank you very much.
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