Cars donated to Ukraine by Sadiq Khan have been left stuck in a field in Surrey.
The vehicles were left just outside the capital due to the upcoming London Mayoral Election on May 2.
An event to send the cars to Kyiv was cancelled, with the motors instead situated near Dorking.
The British Ukrainian Aid (BUA) was appointed by Transport for London (TfL) to run the donations scheme on the transport authority’s behalf.
Only 44 cars and vans have been sent from TFL to be donated to Ukraine
Reuters
The charity previously claimed in social media posts that its first convoy was scheduled to leave for Ukraine on April 11. However, last week BUA cancelled an event to mark its first convoy leaving the UK because of the London mayoral election.
Campaigning rules have halted publicly funded bodies from participating in such events.
Despite Ukraine being in need of additional vehicles, only 44 cars and vans have been sent from TfL to BUA.
Tom Wozniak, a volunteer with Liberty Trucks Ukraine, voiced his disappointment with BUA in an email seen by The Telegraph.
LATEST FROM THE FRONTLINE IN UKRAINE
The Ulez scheme was expanded on August 29
PA
The email said: “If the scheme were to have any chance of success, you would step aside, involve someone else, or do what you originally promised – which is to leverage all the experience offered to help you.
“The difference between sending 300 trucks or 3,000 trucks is measured in hundreds and hundreds of Ukrainian lives. We know from everything that’s in our telephones, because every time we deliver a truck, we always get a report.”
More than 40,000 cars have been written off under Sadiq Khan’s Ulez scrappage scheme, although TfL said that only a small portion of these were available to Ukraine starting from mid-March.
Londoners who want to scrap non-Ulez-compliant cars under TfL’s £2,000 grant scheme can tick a box on a form to donate the vehicle to Ukraine.
The scheme is supposed to encourage Londoners to buy Ulez-compliant cars, improving the capital’s air quality and avoiding daily charges of £12.50.
It comes as Ukraine suspended consular services for military-age men abroad except for those returning to Ukraine, a government helpline said, amid a push to boost conscription for the war against Russia.
Ukraine faces a shortage of troops on the battlefield against a larger, better-equipped enemy nearly 26 months since Russia launched its full-scale invasion.
GB News has approached the BUA for a comment.
Source Agencies
