TRANSCRIPT: TCF Interview with Kostyantyn Bevz

On 26 September, The Checkered Flag sat down with Kostyantyn Bevz to discuss the Automobile Federation of Ukraine‘s collaboration with Motorsport UK to donate a Pinzgauer armoured ambulance to the Ukrainian military’s 46th Airmobile Brigade and how the world has responded to the ongoing Russian invasion.

The full transcript of the interview is available below. Some text has been altered from the actual dialogue to improve readability.

An article on the interview can be read here.

Transcript

KB: So why did you decide to write about this topic with this ambulance?

TCF: Ever since this war started, I’ve always been sort of supportive of Ukraine. I’ve been closely following it, I know some friends who have gone over there, they’ve been doing a lot of things. I’ve also been following a lot of what the FAU has been doing with motorsport connecting it to Ukraine. When I found out about this, I wanted to learn a little more about it, so I decided to write a story on it.

KB: That was a very nice topic because as soon as the war started, I gave some kind of call to all the guys whom I know from the FIA with whom we are doing our stewardship, with whom we are working in different events. One of the guys was Andy Milns from the UK.

We started the conversation regarding what we can do with Motorsport UK to bring some aid to Ukraine. Incidentally, Andy Milns found a review from one of the magazines that the UK embassy in Ukraine decided to purchase, order, and deliver armoured ambulances from UK manufacturer.

That idea was filed to David Richards, and after certain deliberation, they decided to join the same programme and start the fundraising process. David Richards pledged his 25,000 pounds, and they placed the order at the factory.

That was something like May or April of ’22, but then in half a year, something changed and I’ve been updated that unfortunately we won’t be able to pick up the truck from the manufacturer, maybe because it’s a long queue there or something else, I don’t know. But you know, if you have somebody who is willing to help you, you will not push him too much because you will be happy if he will follow his intentions.

We also had examples when the people were obeying that they will bring something or they were declaring that they want to do something, but at the end, their intentions disappeared. You cannot blame the people that they didn’t do something that they said before, because it’s life; today, you have one situation and next day, you will have another situation.

So we agreed that it would be like this, but as the programme was already launched and everybody knew about the intention that Motorsport UK will purchase this armoured ambulance, we agreed that something changed, but we will accept another vehicle. Then I was told that the vehicle will be from the storage warehouse from the company which is professionally involved in similar vehicles. They have found this Pinzgauer and the process was looking like it’s coming to the end. At some moment, we’ve been contacted by the guy who presented himself as a representative of Motorsport UK because surely David Richards will not be involved in this process because he’s the head of Motorsport UK and he’s the owner of Prodrive, so he’s quite a busy man.

We started a collaboration with Fynn Watt from UK. He’s a volunteer from the United Kingdom. He was doing a lot of different things: he was bringing pickups and other vehicles, collecting some aid, bringing them to Ukraine, and he became a representative of Motorsport UK. In this process, he was present at the fundraising event in the UK where they collected some money. They had some deficit of budget because of all the fundraising procedures. I don’t know why. Maybe there was a lack of information distribution or lack of invitation for the clubs to join this programme, so they met some problems with collection for the money because the total amount was about £100,000 for this truck.

Finally, with involvement from Fynn Watt, they collected the required amount of money. They purchased the truck, sent it to service, and then started the most ‘interesting’ thing. It took about one year to manage all the export paperwork and permission to drive that vehicle through European countries. As soon as it was managed, the truck left to Ukraine and you saw the pictures, what I shared to you and I will send you some more right now.

One more interesting topic. When we informed our society that Motorsport UK was collecting the money to purchase this ambulance, I was contacted by one of the producers from Ukraine who decided to film a movie about hospitallers. Did I send you the link for the video?

TCF: I don’t think you have yet.

KB: Not yet?

TCF: I haven’t seen it yet.

KB: One moment. I will show it to you.

[Trailer for Bulletproof Angels]

KB: At the same time I have been contacted by producers of this movie, and we decided to make a part of history, the story of this Fynn Watt from UK. He’s one of the volunteers who is doing a lot of things to help Ukraine during our resistance in this invasion.

That vehicle, we already brought and it’s now delivered to 46th Brigade in Ukraine. I suppose it’s already on the battlefield near Kurakhove, one of the most difficult directions for this moment. This movie will be finished quite soon because they filmed the last part of it with the car, with all the volunteers, with me, with Fynn, with military, with medics who received that vehicle. So this movie is now almost ready and quite soon it will hit the screens.

So this is our story for this vehicle. Probably, I will try to speak with David Richards, who did a huge effort to bring this vehicle. I will speak to him, maybe we will be able to run another fundraising programme or something like this. This is our story.

But from another point of view, I have to note that we have only Motorsport UK; we have ÖAMTC, it’s an Austrian club from Vienna, main club of Austria; we have the Croatian Federation, who really made a dedicated help to the Ukrainian federation in this case. The rest of the countries, I cannot say that they’re helping or they demonstrated they are willing to help except Germany, who brought some aid, and that aid was delivered to Ukraine by the Austrian club. Maybe they’re afraid that somehow, they will have to say sorry to Russians for helping Ukrainians in this war, but most probably this is one of the scare points for them because no clubs want to be involved in aid to Ukraine.

When the war started, in half a year, we published a call from the FIA to help the Ukrainian club with pickups, with ambulances. From all more than 160 clubs, I received zero emails. Unfortunately, this is the true story about the will to help.

I know a lot of people within these countries. Portugal, Germany, England, Italy, who were helping a lot to Ukraine and who still help Ukraine. But I can confirm that only Austrian club, Motorsport UK, and Croatian club did direct aid to Ukraine, to our federation in Ukraine during this war unfortunately.

We know of clubs who have road assistance. They made some basic moves during the war. For example, they made Ukrainian cars free to pay tolls, or they made some free road assistance for Ukrainian cars and so on. They helped somehow for displaced persons in the beginning of the war.

But except these three clubs, none of them did anything to our club or demonstrated anything towards Ukraine. So unfortunately, their position was not to react.

TCF: As an American, you’ve been seeing all the stories from here about whether or not we’ll be sending military aid or not or how politicians keep getting in the way. For you as a Ukrainian, what message would you want to give to politicians in charge here in the U.S. or in the West in general?

KB: One month ago, I was a steward on the European Truck Racing Championship in the Czech Republic. Before that, I was traveling with my family from Ukraine to France, where my family live now; they live near Bordeaux. On our way to France by car, we visited Austria. We’ve driven through Grossglockner, a high mountain passage, we’ve driven through Flüela Pass in Switzerland. Then in France, we were on the ocean coast, we ate fantastic oysters, we spent four days together there in Bordeaux. That was some kind of paradise for all our family because my family visited me this year for, I don’t know, for thirty days. They ‘enjoyed’ all air raid alarms because of missiles flying over our heads, so it was a bit scary for them; I’m fully adopted to it.

When I came to the event, usually when we meet at the event and I don’t know people in person, for example, all of them are new for me, they’re always asking, “What is going on? Why it happens like this? What do they want from you? How it looks like?”

I catch myself on the thought that despite all my conversation, despite all my explanations, showing videos, footage or something else showing the missiles flying to the child hospital. For all the people, it will be something which is very far away; even if only 500 kilometres from them or 100 kilometres or 1,000, it’s too far away, it’s a movie, it is not the reality. It’s very awful that people are dying, but all the people, they can imagine that they can absorb that information but they will never understand what is going on.

The biggest problem is that Ukraine made Russia. If we take all our history, Kyiv is a 1,550-year-old city. Moscow was born because of Kyiv, because the Kyiv king established Moscow 800 years ago. It’s not Ukraine, a small part of Russia; it’s Russia, the bad son of Ukraine, unfortunately.

What I see for myself: in the beginning of the 20th century, when the First World War came up and the Russian Empire split and the Bolsheviks and communists came, they started this war. When all the world was on their pace to develop themselves, Russian Empire and all involved countries rolled back for 100 years when in the 20th century, everybody was developing. The Soviet Union was staying on the same level of mental development because they was living in the paradigm of empire.

And now, when you come to Europe, when you come to U.S., when you come to any other developed country, you see that the countries are investing money in better living, technologies, hospitality, infrastructure, education, science. Russia was investing money in weapons and dreaming how to restore the empire. But in the 21st century, empire doesn’t mean anything.

It is a synergy of talented people. It’s a synergy of science, of wellness around you and ability to work in good condition, when you achieve something. Not because you are a better fighter than somebody else and you can survive because you are stronger. No, because you have a better condition of living. You have more talents nearby. Everything you have is better and you can dream and you can think about the future, not about the past. They are thinking about the past.

Now, we have a big problem with tolerance. When we cannot say that grey is grey and black is black and white is white, we start to say, “Uh, it’s obviously not so certain as you think for the moment.” You start to bring some wording which does not belong to the situation. If you see the blood on your finger, you can say, “Oh, it’s blood. No, no, no, no, no… Maybe some video effects or somebody painted your finger. Let’s make a working group and let’s discuss what is going on.”

No, it doesn’t work like this. When in 2014, Russians knocked down that Malaysian Boeing in Ukraine, we thought, ‘That’s the end. Now the war is finished.’ But then Europe started to blew like a, sorry for my frank wording, like saying, “It’s not so certain. We have to develop it. We have to discover it, we have to take a deeper look.” No.

We finished the Second World War. We finished that war because we had the people who had their point of view and who had the possibility to call the things with their proper names. Till the world will not call it war, till the world will continue to purchase something from Russia, till the world will tolerate Russians, till the world will allow them to do whatever they want and till they will be so scary as they are for this moment, I can say that there is no scare to Russians. Anybody should not scare them.

It’s like a bear coming into town and you have, “Okay, just wait. Take my hand, eat it, and don’t touch anybody else.” He will take your hand, he will take your body, he will take your neighbour, he will take whatever he wants, what he sees. So unfortunately, the world decided to speak with barbarians, with tolerance and with intelligence. It doesn’t work like this.

What I want to say? Study history. Look at how it was, take a look in the future because you will never have a future if you don’t remember your past. Analyse history, look at the roots, and try to make certain decisions, not about “We will tolerate it and everything will be fine.” No, Crimea showed us that tolerance doesn’t work. The situation in Georgia, in Abkhazia, showed us that tolerance doesn’t work. Syria showed us the same. Libya showed us the same.

The war in Europe, it’s not the war in countries with plenty of natural resources where some big countries have their interests and they just split in the countries. We have to name it how it is. For example, that war in Syria and war in Libya, it’s not about the independence of people, it’s about the resources and how the big countries and the big corporations are trying to share their parts. But now, the war in Ukraine where we don’t have as much resources as Syria or Libya, now it’s the war for philosophy. It’s the war, the matter of what is to bring the Stone Age in our lives and the life of Europe.

I just want to wish that people will be more considerable, people will think more, and people will understand that uncertain positions bring a lot of deaths.

To our situation with aid from the U.S., to be honest, we stand against Russia because of the help from the United States. But all these three years, we have a strong feeling that the amount of aid which we are receiving right now is just enough aid to keep our body alive because we had a strong chance to throw away Russians from our territory, but everybody was too scared to give us enough weapons in 2022 to throw away them from Ukraine.

And now, in the United States, you have thousands of Abrams standing somewhere in the deserts, in the warehouses. It’s already old tanks for you, it can be crucial and vital for Ukraine, and nobody sends it. When you have thousands of F-16s also standing in warehouses and able to join the party, we still have test units for six or ten units or something like this.

You cannot imagine how many war machines Russia throws every day into Ukraine. Today, officially, we have 650,000 killed Russian soldiers. 650 thousand. We don’t calculate the wounded and we don’t calculate disabled soldiers, how they became after the war action.

TCF: As far as I can tell from American policy, it’s feeling more like, rather than trying to help Ukraine win the war, it’s trying to help Ukraine not lose the war, if that makes any sense to you. It feels like the government is preparing for a ‘normal’ Russia, even though as we can see time to time again, it doesn’t work like that.

KB: You know, there is no real philosophy in their actions. They’re preparing for something else. Probably they want to…

TCF: Bring back the Soviet Union? Bring back the Russian Empire?

KB: To make Russia weaker with Ukrainian help. But now they’re doing Russia stronger, and then they will have a mad bear which they have to disable. For now, it looks like nobody wants to make a decision and they are really happy with this war because they’re having bigger incomes.

TCF: In Ukraine, do you ever feel hopeless or feel that things are going not the way they really should be because of all of this happening?

KB: The situation is very bad now because we don’t have enough people. I buried my ex-worker three, four days ago. Maybe you saw it on my story on Facebook. I’ve been now on ten or twelve funerals already. We don’t have men to fight anymore. Even my guy from my sawmill who is 56 years old, he was mobilised to the army with plenty of disorders; when it’s 25 degrees outside and I send him to cut the grass, he cannot do it because he has blood pressure issues and problems with the heart.

Personally, I also have some list of disorders which does not allow me to join the army, but I’m not fully dismissed from the army so they can call me if the situation will be even worse than now. I’ve already been warned that most probably next month I will be called to the army, despite the fact that I cannot take part in direct battle combat because of my back and my heart and so on. I was dismissed from the army when I was studying on the first course of my university. I was studying in the military institution, and after the first year I was dismissed and I moved to civil faculty. I only can be involved in some service stuff somewhere in the very back in the HQ or somewhere there, but there are plenty of other people who can be there, especially after receiving some injury. That injury limits them to work in normal life. So we’ll see, I don’t know.

But we have much bigger problems now than we had two years ago. Now, to stop Russia is ten times harder than it was in 2022, and every next month makes this process much more expensive.

TCF: As someone looking in the West, what else do you think we can do to help Ukraine?

KB: You cannot give us weapons because you are not part of the parliament or you’re not a Senator who can vote to give us weapons. The only thing that we can do is to help Ukraine. Just keep helping Ukraine.

There is a platform, an official platform of Ukraine, which is being supported by many actors in the United States, by scientists, called UNITED24. One of the best platforms where the people can donate and help Ukraine because all the money from there is used to purchase many things which we need. We need drones, we need ammo, we need tourniquets, we need everything to save our lives and help our soldiers to fight, and we need to help people who lost their houses and so on.

If anybody is wishing to help Ukraine, this is the best way now if you cannot help us get the weapons, because weapons is the only language which Russia can understand. No way.

I advise just to read the history of how Crimea became Russian, because Crimea has never been Russian except in the 19th century when they won the Crimean War. No village name is in Russian or Ukrainian. It’s everything in Tatarian, Tatar language: Mangup-Kale, Chufut-Kale, and so on. Moscow was established by Kyiv. Donbas, which they say is a “truly Russian region,” is a Ukrainian region in which during the Soviet Union, people all around Russia were brought to work on the coal mines and that’s how it became Russian. All in the 20th-century Soviet Union and before in the 18th century, in the 19th century, all their kings and queens and all the rest of the militaries that were trying to forbid Ukrainian language, Ukrainian literature, they were burning their books, forbidding to teach scholars, to teach students and children in schools in Ukrainian language, with Ukrainian language.

Unfortunately, they want to kill us for the last 300 years because they’re still in history and Kyiv is a vital point to fulfill their history.

Sometimes we joke that Mr. (Joseph) Goebbels, from the German army, from the Second World War, is spinning in his coffin when he sees how the Russian government with (Vladimir) Putin, with (Sergey) Lavrov, is twisting the history and telling the bullshit and true lies in the eyes and ears of people who listen to them, and how Goebbels’ often-repeated lies become truths. They do the same now. They call Ukrainians as Nazis, but we never had any problems with any language, with any religion, with anything.

Ukrainian restaurants are one of the best in Europe. We are one of the most developed countries in the digital area. We have one of the best army of IT programmers and so on who work to make life better. We have plenty of people who develop in the media, Google, and other countries because they came from Ukraine or they were born in Ukraine. They want to steal our history and they want to rewrite our history and they are doing it right now.

TCF: I’m a history student in college, and every time I go on Twitter or wherever and I see all these people pushing all these Russian talking points, like you said about the history, it just makes me want to like… if I could like just punch them in the…

KB: Everything is bullshit. Everything is bullshit. If you will have any case when you will start deliberations with Russian narratives, just text me what you want to hear and I will prepare you some historical references in English to discover it with your friends or your colleagues to see.

Now, it’s much easier to twist history because you can say, “Oh, that source there, that newspaper, that book.” You can write that book and then you will reference that book and you will go and write some bullshit and then you will say, “That book and that newspaper,” that you paid for the posting in that newspaper, references that you did this, this, this, and it will not be a truth.

When I was in Austria one month ago, on my way from Bordeaux to Czech, I brought a gift to the Austrian club. It is the photobook, How We Pass Through the Fire. That photobook is the collection of the best photos made from the first two years of war by national and international photographers. I talked to Eva-Maria (Kerschl), I said, “You know, history can be twisted because we don’t know who will win the war, but the photos will keep the reality. And photos will make the reference for the future generations.”

Interview on YouTube