Even in February of this year, the production of the Vesta model was running undisturbed, but then came the Russian aggression in Ukraine and the familiar form of sanctions. The factory in Izhevsk has been standing still for five months, and its employees fear that it will never start again. In an open letter, they ask Vladimir Putin to “save them again”.
The current situation at the plant is described by employees as “extremely negative”, complaining that highly skilled specialists have to paint rooms, cut grass and collect rubbish to make ends meet.
An open letter published on social networks points out the fact that the share of domestic parts on the “best Russian car” has been at only 40 percent since the start of production in 2015, with the rest being imports. “We believe that it was the French owners of the plant who committed the sabotage,” they write to Putin. They allude to the fact that Renault, as one of the first foreign manufacturers, reacted to an aggressive war by stopping the supply of parts.
“We are worried that we will be left without a car, without a factory. We have no prospects,” cites Russian newspaper Gazeta of trade union leader Viktor Nazarov. According to trade unionists, the management of AvtoVAZ has already decided to move Vesta production from Izhevsk to Togliatti, because the production space at the main Lady plant is double and, moreover, completely unused.
The president of AvtoVAZ, Maxim Sokolov, has previously stated that production of the Lady Vesta will be possible to resume in 2023 at the earliest, when the automaker concludes contracts with new suppliers. He then promised the employees of the Izhevsk plant that they could produce the Largus electric car instead of the Vesta.
However, few people in Izhevsk believe this. “It turns out that the top management of AvtoVAZ is deliberately deceiving us. They will take our Vesta and keep the promise that we can produce an electric car here, which today only exists on paper. Two to three years of hard work are needed for this to happen,” he writes in the letter.
The employees also point to the fact that only around two thousand electric cars were sold in the whole of Russia last year, and they were mostly Tesla, Audi and Porsche luxury cars. “Largus is intended to be a low-cost family car aimed at buyers in regions where there are no chargers for electric cars.”
As Maxim Kadakov, the editor-in-chief of the Russian motoring magazine Behind the Wheel, told Gazeta, some employees have already understood the situation and found work at the Kalashnikov plant, which, unlike Lady, is increasing production.
However, the remaining three thousand are not giving up their fight to save the factory yet. “Dear Vladimir Vladimirovich! In 2010, it was you who saved our Izhevsk Automobile Plant, prevented the bankruptcy and sale of assets, and designated AvtoVAZ as a strategic partner. Do not allow illegal actions to take place today, do not let the best car manufacturer in Russia be destroyed,” they try soften Putin in the letter.
The Izhevsk plant has been operating since 1966, when it began assembling Muscovites from imported parts. The cars, which are almost identical in appearance, started to differ from each other only in the 1970s, when Iž, unlike the Moskvich, kept the front grille with round lights, while the Moskvich switched to the more fashionable rectangular reflectors of the time. Cars made under the Iž brand had a better reputation in their time than the originals due to slightly more careful assembly.
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