Makeshift arms are pouring out of Ukraine’s ateliers

IT DID NOTBC take long for Pravda, a trendy microbrewery in Lviv, to switch from brewing beer to mixing Molotov cocktails. It began churning out these improvised incendiaries on February 25th, the day after Russia invaded. Equipment previously employed for brews that won awards in Brussels, Munich and Prague now blends and bottles a concoction made from six parts machine oil, three parts petrol, four parts expanded polystyrene dissolved in a solvent called thinner 646, and a sprinkling of powdered aluminium. The result (see picture above) is soupy, sticky and burns like crazy—the better to disable any Russian military vehicle it is hurled at. After running out of its own bottles, the brewery even stooped, jokes Yuri Zastavny, Pravda’s owner, to filling empties that had once held the likes of Corona and Miller.Nor are Pravda’s employees content only to mix Molotovs. They are also fashioning caltrops. These are tetrahedral structures with a spike at each vertex, which means that, however they fall, one spike points upwards. Caltrops have been used as “area denial” weapons on battlefields since ancient times (Alexander the Great employed them to beat the Persians at Gaugamela in 331). Originally, they were intended to bring down charging cavalry and war chariots. Now their targets are vehicle tyres and soldiers’ boots. Pravda’s people make them out of “rebar”—the lengths of twisted steel used to reinforce concrete.