Ukraine civilians and breweries are heeding to president Zelensky’s call to make Molotov cocktails this weekend to defend the country, as Ukraine braces for Russia’s intensified invasion.
On Sunday, one of the country’s breweries Pravda Brewery located in western Ukraine has suspended its beer operation and switched to making Molotov cocktails and posted detailed instructions to teach local residents to make it on its Instagram page.
Molotov cocktails, also called “poor man’s grenades,” are petrol bombs in which glass bottles are filled with flammable liquids—usually gasoline—with a cloth fuse that is then ignited.
Located in Lviv, near the Polish border, the brewery has the capacity to produce 1.5 million liters of beer a year, but on Saturday, its owner decided to pause production and began producing the petrol bombs for the Ukrainian Territorial Defence Forces.
“We do this because someone has to. We have the skills, we went through a street revolution in 2014,” owner Yuriy Zastavny, told France24 in an interview, while referring to Kyiv’s pro-Western uprising that ousted a Kremlin-backed regime.
The 8-year-old brewery is known for its outspoken criticism towards Russian president Putin. And one of its most popular beer is called “Putin khuylo”, commonly translated as “Putin is a d***head”, a slogan deriding the Russian President.
The golden ale is described to have “a beautiful citrus aroma and flavor,” according to its website.
Founded in 2014, the brewery claims to be the only brewery in Ukraine that uses double fermentation. When the beer is brewed and bottled, it add sugar and yeast, kickstarting a secondary fermentation in the bottle.
On February 24, Ukraine defense ministry tweeted details urging volunteers to make Molotov cocktails as Russian forces press into the nation’s capital Kyiv.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced last week that the country will arm anyone who’s willing to pick up weapons to defend the country.
