'Frankenstein vehicle'
In another workshop in Kyiv's outskirts, mechanics are also at work for the war effort -- on armoured vehicles for medical use.
The project is spearheaded by Romanian volunteer Radu Hossu, who raised funds among Romanians and Moldovans via his Facebook page.
It will provide state-of-the-art transportation for a medical battalion in the war-hit eastern Donetsk region.
Hossu hopes it will then be reproduced more widely.
His team is creating a complex of different-use vehicles to work in tandem, costing around $165,000.
They include a hybrid of a Ford truck and a Soviet Gaz chassis that will become an extraction vehicle to remove wounded soldiers from frontline areas even under fire.
It will be heavily armoured, with huge wheels.
"This is basically a Frankenstein vehicle -- it doesn't exist on the planet," Hossu said.
A Polish bus has been rebuilt as a mobile hospital where medics can immediately do complex operations.
Next, a former food truck is being converted into a medics' sleep and wash area.
And a towable boat will be able to evacuate the wounded by water.
Hossu, a former political consultant, has named the project after Oleg Gubal, a Ukrainian soldier who died en route to hospital.
He knew Gubal personally and wants to stop other families experiencing such grief.
"If something like this would have existed... I'm not saying Oleg would be alive, but it would have been a chance for him to survive," Hossu said.
