Doomed to rust: on the outskirts of Uzhgorod, there is a cemetery of confiscated cars (PHOTOS)

Transcarpathian publications have repeatedly written about the "car cemeteries" in the border villages of Hungary and in the Slovak village of Ubl’a.

The fact is that the owners of the cars with European registration leave them in the border villages of Europe, where they are dismantled for spare parts or sold for pennies.

However, Ukraine has its own "car cemetery". Crossing the border with Romania in Chernivtsi region, a journalist of the Mukachevo.net saw a large parking lot with abandoned cars.

Flat tires, removed license plates, rusty hoods – this is the picture you see when you wait at the border. What is that and why are they there? The locals said they would all be disposed of. 

As it turned out, those are not abandoned cars with European registration. Those are confiscated cars (almost all of them are with foreign registration). They were taken away for customs rules violations, smuggling, etc. Under the court ruling, those cars can be returned to the owner or sold.

According to the law, the bailiffs service must auction such cars 3 times, and if no one wants to buy them, a car may be donated to charitable non-governmental organizations and foundations, or disposed of. In practice, they have no place to dispose of the cars, they can not sell them, and can not donate them to charity because of foreign registration. That is why, they have been stuck in parking lots for years.

According to a former employee of the Border Guard Service of Ukraine, there are hundreds of such vehicles in Transcarpathia. But there is no place for them at the border, so they are immediately taken to a special impound lot, where they stay indefinitely.

Few people know that one of such lots is located near the Krasnodontsi market in Uzhgorod. A common person is not allowed to be there. Good cars are usually taken quite quickly by people in the know. Only unwanted old cars with European registration remain.

Nobody can answer when they are going to be disposed of. Therefore, they are still doomed to rust at the car cemeteries.