Lviv Mayor Refuses to Buy Belarusian Buses

The inhabitants of the Ukrainian city support him in this.

The Belarusian company MAZ has expressed a desire to deliver its buses to the Ukrainian city of Lviv, where a program to upgrade public transport is continuing. However, this may not happen for political reasons. Will Lviv residents refuse to sponsor Lukashenka's regime? Read about this in the material of Belsat.

A tender for the purchase of 100 buses for the city of Lviv was announced in February last year. Most of the money for the purchase of transport should be provided by the European Investment Bank. The new transport should replace small, old and uncomfortable buses. But recently, the mayor of Lviv said that the likely winner of the tender is a dealer of the Belarusian MAZ, and asked the public whether they have the moral right to sponsor the Lukashenka regime.

Here is what the inhabitants of Lviv say about it:

"We believe that Lukashenka does not need to be sponsored."

"Electron is a Lviv company. This is all for the city, and here, it seems to me, there shouldn't be any question at all."

"If I were Sadovyi, I would buy Ukrainian buses."

"Probably you can't buy either in Russia or in Belarus."

The Belarusians living in Lviv (some of them moved here after the elections for political reasons) held a rally in the city center on Sunday so that the Ukrainian authorities would listen to their opinion and not buy buses from MAZ. In addition, they wrote an open letter addressed to the mayor, which has already been signed by several hundred people.

"The idea itself is very good. Indeed, Lviv really needs good comfortable buses. What the mayor does for the place, he does the right thing. Another thing is that today, due to political events, by purchasing these buses, he will thereby support this bloody regime, and this money will be used t imprison, kill, and maim people," says Aliaksei Frantskevich, a Belarusian activist living in Lviv.

Five companies took part in the tender: two represented Ukrainian manufacturers, two - Belarusian, and one - Turkish. One of the Ukrainian representatives, according to the mayor, could not provide all the necessary documentation for the tender, and the second, the local Electron plant, offered a much higher price for the bus than the MAZ dealer: 222 thousand euros against 158 thousand. This means that the total savings would amount to almost € 6.5 million.

"The Belarusians gave the smaller price, much less than even the price at which buses for Kyiv were recently sold because Kyiv bought 190 MAZ buses. But, given the current situation with sanctions, we turned to the government and the prime minister, we turned to the ambassador of the European Union in Ukraine, we turned to the European Investment Bank to help us figure out how to deal with this situation. Because, on the one hand, we need buses, and on the other hand, it is important for us that the brotherly Belarusian people have the democratic power and for us to be neighbors because many Belarusians come to Lviv and, perhaps, draw the spirit of democracy here," said the mayor of Lviv Andriy Sadovyi.

Now the mayor of Lviv is awaiting a response from the government and the European Investment Bank. In his opinion, the best solution would be to hold a new tender. Thus, firstly, they will not support Lukashenka's regime, and secondly, they will raise the issue of supporting their Ukrainian producers.