(Lviv) In an industrial area of Lviv, the main city in western Ukraine, employees of the Pravda brewery have stopped beer. Faced with the invasion of their country by Russia, they are now producing Molotov cocktails.
Posted at 3:37 p.m.
“You have to wait until the cloth is well soaked. When it is, that means the Molotov cocktail is ready,” explains a young man with a smile, a thick red anorak and a cap on his head, while pushing a tea towel deeply into a beer bottle filled with a mixture of beer. oil and gasoline.
Beside him, two other employees of the brewery methodically and in good humor repeat the same gestures.
A few dozen ready-to-use Molotov cocktails are placed on trestles, protected from the snow falling in light flakes.
Faced with the Russian tanks Lviv residents fear will arrive in their city, a bastion of Ukrainian identity, these incendiary devices might seem trivial, but the matter could not be more serious for Yuri Zastavny, the owner of Pravda , which presents its initiative to journalists.
“We’re doing this because someone has to. We have the skills, we went through a street revolution in 2014 (the pro-European Maidan movement, editor’s note), when we had to make and use Molotov cocktails”, he explains, specifying that the idea came from its employees, many of whom had taken part in the movement.
Founded in 2014, Pravda has become an institution in Lviv. She has already made a name for herself by naming one of her favorite beers after an insult to Vladimir Poutine.
Its employees began producing Molotov cocktails for Ukraine’s territorial defense on Saturday, as reservists responded to the country’s President Volodymyr Zelensky’s call to take up arms.
PHOTO YURIY DYACHYSHYN, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Founded in 2014, Pravda has become an institution in Lviv. She has already made a name for herself by naming one of her favorite beers after an insult to Vladimir Poutine.
The checkpoints erected at the entrances to the city of 720,000 inhabitants, where police, soldiers and volunteers strictly control the passage of each vehicle, are already largely equipped with them.
On Sunday, the brewery indicated on social networks that it had opened its points of sale with a basement to take shelter in the event of an air alert. But it does not especially intend to stop producing Molotov cocktails.
We must “do everything we can when we can to help win this war”, concludes Yuri Zastavny.