The New York Times recently reported on the status of Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, but the report contains a mistake that needs correction. The NYT details how Ukraine’s army is holding the Russians back with lighter and more mobile forces. Anti-tank units, led by people like Lt. Tetyana Chornovol, are ambushing and disabling Russian columns throughout the capital. And they’re defending their city from behind the wheel of their own personal cars, their own dailies.
The NYT reported that Lt. Chornovol drives a red Chevy Volt, but footage of the lieutenant captured by Reuters reveals that the red Chevy is actually an Aveo:
Specifically, Lt. Chornovol drives a first-generation Chevy Aveo LS hatchback, which the report did correctly mention, though it was described as an “electric hatchback,” which is, again, incorrect. From the NYT:
Lieutenant Chornovol, 42, is a former activist in Ukraine’s street protest movement who sent her two children to safety before reporting for duty as a reserve officer. She commands two teams of a half-dozen or so people each, firing Ukrainian-made, tripod-mounted missiles, which they transport to ambush positions in their personal cars.
Lieutenant Chornovol drives a red Chevy Volt electric hatchback, which she calls an “ecologically clean killing machine.”
Interviewed beside a burning grocery warehouse in the suburban town of Brovary, the lieutenant popped the hatchback to reveal a beige tube, holding a Stugna-P missile. It has a range of three miles and hits a target within a diameter of one foot.
Of course, I don’t blame the NYT’s war correspondent for the oversight. The Lieutenant’s story is distractingly shocking and varied. The car’s misnomer would be easy to overlook unless you’re a staunch advocate of subcompacts. And we will always come to the defense of the B-segment.
Don’t get me wrong; the Chevy Volt is a good car! It deserves praise as a plug-in that was ahead of the EV primetime. It may have even saved GM at some point, or so we believed. But a red Chevy Volt is not running around Kyiv, trying to save the capital from Russian forces by transporting Ukrainian-made missiles with the split seat down, as if these dangerous munitions were groceries.
Not a Volt, but an Aveo. An ordinary car, driven to extraordinary tasks when its life as a commuter or grocery-getter was undone by the invasion. Per the NYT:
Interviewed beside a burning grocery warehouse in the suburban town of Brovary, the lieutenant popped the hatchback to reveal a beige tube, holding a Stugna-P missile. It has a range of three miles and hits a target within a diameter of one foot.
Seemingly unfazed by combat, Lieutenant Chornovol described the Ukrainian tactic of ambushes that has defined the early phases of the battle for the capital. Last week, she said, she blew up a Russian tank a few miles east of Brovary on the M01 highway.
“We look for firing positions where we can see a stretch of road,” Lieutenant Chornovol said, adding that “we know a column will drive on the road” eventually. With her car parked some distance away, covered in camouflage, she and her team lay in wait in a tree line for three days before a Russian column came rumbling down the road.
Lt. Chornovol goes on to say Kyiv will not capitulate to the Russians, and that their Aveo ambushes are working better than even the anti-tank unit thought. They reportedly joke that spent missile tubes will store potatoes after the war. So when the invasion ends, the red Chevy’s work isn’t over. Godspeed, Aveo.
