Pridebikes – Human-friendly bikes from Ukraine
This is our latest post in Russian.
As you all know, the main purpose of our brand’s existence is to give people the opportunity to let go of the world’s bustle, problems and challenges, ride a bike and go on an adventure. You can do this today but I can’t.
I, Stas Cherevan, director of Pridebikes, write this text from a bomb shelter, where my daughter is trying to fall asleep on a cold tile floor. Our whole team is fighting for their lives right now. It’s about time! So are millions of Ukrainians. Many lack food, water. Huge crowds in queues of refugees at the borders of the European Union.
Instead of spring birds, the vultures of Grad, Smercha and your Iskanders fly to us. We haven’t slept in a few days. There is not a single person in the 40 million Ukraine who has not been affected by the war.
War is destroying everything that has become the foundation environment for the emergence of the #pridebikes brand and our philosophy.
We demand you to protest against this war by all means available to you. Go out on the streets, write on social networks about what is happening and not being unhappy. Don’t trust your state media. We are being killed in our native land. This is not a military operation, this is an extermination.
We spoke the Russian language for many years and no one oppressed us. There are no Nazis and no Russophobes here. Here are people dying from your bullets and shells.
Russian authorities. You must stop this war immediately, remove the troops from our territory. We are not Russia. It’s not here. And it never happened. And there will never be. You are at home with weapons and don’t expect mercy from the enemy either.
Stas Cherevan, director of Pridebikes, Feb 1 2022
Pridebikes is a established bike brand based in Kharkiv, Ukraine.
Kharkiv is the second biggest city in Ukraine, close to the Russian border and was home to the Kharkiv bicycle plant, that in its heydays produced the most popular bicycle brand in the USSR and had an output of over 1 million bicycles a year.
Notable cyclists from Kharkiv are Olena Starikova, 2nd in the Sprint at last year’s Olympics in Tokyo, and Oleksandr Polivoda, 2x Ukrainian national champion (2016, 2018).
Kharkiv was to 70% destroyed during WW2, as German and Russian forces fought bitterly over the city. Now it is threatened to be levelled again by the Russian invaders.
Pridebikes was established around 15 years ago and their line has since expanded to cover the entire spectrum from road to urban to gravel to mountain bikes. The frames are made in China, and assembly is in the Ukraine. Check them out! Pridebikes
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