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Ukrainian brewery ditches beer for Molotov cocktails in war against Russia

A Ukrainian brewery has switched craft beer for Molotov cocktails in the fight against advancing Russian troops.

The workers at the Pravda brewery in Lviv decided to produce the petrol bombs amid fears that Russian tanks will roll into the western city of 720,000 residents near the Polish border, Agence France-Presse reported.

The company began producing the incendiary weapons for the Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces, which is made up of reservists who responded to President Volodymyr Zelensky’s call to take up arms.

A volunteer demonstrates the preparation of Molotov cocktails at the Pravda (Truth) brewery in Lviv. AFP via Getty Images

“You have to wait for the cloth to be well soaked. When it is, that means the Molotov cocktail is ready,” one smiling employee told AFP as he stuffed the cloth deep into a beer bottle filled with a mixture of oil and gasoline.

The beers-to-bombs endeavor comes after officials in the capital of Kyiv urged locals last week to “neutralize the occupier” with homemade firebombs.


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Military instructors have been teaching civilians to use Molotov cocktails against the heavily armed Russian troops.

At the Pravda brewery, a few dozen of the bombs were placed neatly on tables so as to protect them from the light snowfall.

The employees of Pravda Brewery in Lviv came up with the idea to begin making Molotov cocktails. AFP via Getty Images
A volunteer collects Molotov cocktails from Pravda Brewery. AFP via Getty Images

The business owner, Yuriy Zastavny, said the idea to produce them came from one of his employees.

“We do this because someone has to. We have the skills, we went through a street revolution in 2014,” he said, referring to Kyiv’s pro-Western uprising that ousted a Kremlin-backed regime.

“We had to make and use Molotov cocktails then,” he said, vowing to do “everything we can to help win this war.”

“I have absolutely no doubt that we’ll win,” he said in an interview with Fox News Monday. “We are already winning because we already disrupt[ed] the plans of the crazy dictator.

“And we will continue to do it, because they are not facing only the Ukrainian Army, but they are facing the army of 40 million people prepared to fight every step,” Zastavny said.

One of Pravda’s favorite brews is called “Putin khuylo,” AFP reported — which roughly translates to “Putin is a d—head.”

Pravda Brewery is one of Ukraine’s leading breweries, known for its beers with politically engaged messages in reaction to what the country has been going through since 2014. Getty Images
Labels of Pravda Brewery’s successful beers are displayed on February 18, 2022, in Lviv, Ukraine. Once the center of Ukraine’s 2014 revolution, Lviv is back in the spotlight as a safe haven for diplomats evacuated from Kyiv amid ongoing tensions with Russia. Getty Images