Sergey Nikolayev: UAZ vehicles and Geopolitics

The citizens of the city of Ulyanovsk, where the well-known Russian UAZ off-roads are assembled, are rather surprised to see the new models of UAZ vehicles in the reports about the war in Afghanistan. The head of the Ulyanovsk regional administration, Vladimir Shamanov has his own explanation to that. He said that the military hardware was delivered from the Russian Armed Forces bases to Afghanistan. The delivered defense technology was not old. Besides tanks, armoured vehicles, the forces of the Northern Alliance are supplied with those UAZ vehicles.

One of consequences of the help to the former Afghan opposition, and now to the “governmental troops” is the increase of the defense order at the Russian enterprises, including UAZ. However, the machine-building workers of Ulyanovsk do not count on Afghanistan only. All Russian military structures are now “working” on the increase of the order for the vehicles from Ulyanovsk.

UAZ is now trying to have its position it used to take in the countries of the former socialist group and in the foreign countries back.

Marin Marinov - the president of UAZ’s largest dealer in Bulgaria has recently visited the city of Ulyanovsk. He discussed a project to establish the assembly production of UAZ offroads in Bulgaria. The Bulgarian businessman said that the vehicles, produced by the company, had good competition with the foreign offroads.

On the photo: Russian UAZ (Ulyanovsk Automobil Zavod) 4X4s

Sergey Nikolayev PRAVDA.Ru Ulyanovsk

Read the original in Russian: http://www.pravda.ru/main/2001/11/22/34115.html