‘Bottle beer later.’ Ukraine brewery produces Molotov cocktails for citizen soldiers

A brewery in Lviv says it has switched production from beer to Molotov cocktails as the Russian invasion of Ukraine continues.

“Pravda Brewery team is hand-bottling today,” owner Yuri Zastavny posted on Instagram with a photo of three homemade firebombs. “It’s a very special bottling. We’ll bottle beer later.”

Russia launched an invasion of Ukraine on three fronts early Thursday, Feb. 24, “bombarding cities, towns and villages” as forces advanced toward the capital of Kyiv.

“We are not putting down arms,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Saturday, Feb. 26. “We will be defending our country, because our weapon is truth, and our truth is that this is our land, our country, our children, and we will defend all of this.”

Ukrainian forces are putting up a “very determined resistance,” particularly in Kyiv, which is under heavy Russian attack by artillery and cruise missiles, Reuters reported.

In an interview Monday, Feb. 28, Zastavny told Fox News the Molotov cocktail initiative came from his workers in Lviv, a city in western Ukraine, who wanted “to do something, what you can do, where you can.”

“Small craft brewers, they need to make something, they can’t just sit idle — so we decided to use our chemical skills and our own labor to do something that requires precision and safety, exactly like beer,” he said.

“There’s no time for beer,” Zastavny told Fox News. “We need to get our other things sorted out.”

In another Instagram post, Zastavny wrote that his team has prior experience in the field.

“Not just theory ⁠— many of us went thru the bloody street protests of 2014,” he wrote, referring to Russia’s seizure of Crimea from Ukraine.

Other civilians across Ukraine also are creating homemade Molotov cocktails, such as an operation in a basement in Kyiv, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The Ukrainian Defense Ministry urged citizens on Twitter to “make Molotov cocktails and take down the occupier,” and television stations broadcast instructions, according to the publication..

Ukraine, the second-largest nation in Europe by land mass, was part of the former Soviet Union until it declared independence in 1991. It is not a NATO member.

This story was originally published February 28, 2022 at 4:30 PM with the headline "‘Bottle beer later.’ Ukraine brewery produces Molotov cocktails for citizen soldiers."