From gun gear to prosthetic leg covers, volunteers boost Ukraine’s army
Al Jazeera
As Russia’s war rages, thousands of Ukrainians are using innovative technology to support the military and injured veterans.
Chernihiv, Ukraine – In combat, the speed of loading your assault gun’s magazine is a matter of life and death.
Sometimes, a soldier has to load the rounds in sub-zero temperatures, with wet or wounded hands. An improperly loaded magazine could jam the rifle and get its owner killed.
A simple and inexpensive accessory – magazine speed loaders known among gun enthusiasts as “magloaders” or “thumb savers” – pushes the magazine’s top so that the rounds are inserted with little or no pressure.
Widely available in the United States, the speed loaders were virtually unknown in Ukraine until Take Back Our History, a volunteer group in the northern city of Chernihiv, began manufacturing and supplying them to the military, free of charge.
“They could save a life,” Bohdan Sereda, a 36-year-old engineer who volunteers with the group, told Al Jazeera.
