Seven vehicles have been pushed in a snowstorm onto a trailer and out of a state impound lot on Wednesday, destined for Ukraine.

200 vehicles have been taken from drivers discovered with blood alcohol ranges over 0.15% in two months within the Baltic nation of 1.9 million folks.

“It is really very scary while you realise what number of vehicles are driving round with drunk drivers,” mentioned Reinis Poznaks, founding father of the NGO referred to as Twitter Convoy which has been tasked by the federal government to ship the autos to Ukraine.

The 2-dozen confiscated vehicles the state has promised at hand him every week to ship to Ukraine will check the boundaries of his largely volunteer operation, Poznaks mentioned.

“No-one anticipated that persons are drunk-driving so many autos, they can not promote them as quick as persons are consuming. In order that’s why I got here with the concept – ship them to Ukraine,” Poznaks mentioned.

He laughed as he discovered a Russian flag pinned in one of many confiscated autos, left there by its proprietor.

Twitter Convoy has already dispatched about 1,200 autos, after saying a plea for donations on Twitter days after the Russia’s invasion began on Feb. 24 final 12 months. It raised 2 million euros ($2.1 million) for automobile purchases, renovations, and logistics in 2022.

Latvian Finance Minister Arvils Aseradens mentioned the federal government was impressed by the success of the NGO to drop makes an attempt to public sale the autos: “We mentioned, effectively, you’ll be able to take these vehicles… and (Poznak) says, ‘Oh, that is superb!'”

“We’re able to do virtually something to assist Ukrainians.”

At a police raid on Wednesday, the place 4 officers closed a Riga street for half an hour to examine each driver for alcohol, none was discovered drunk.

However 4,300 drivers have been discovered over-the-limit on Latvia’s roads final 12 months, police mentioned, and have been concerned in nearly thousand accidents in 2022.