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ABC News
Business
national regional reporter Jeremy Story Carter

Drinkers for Ukraine campaign hopes to tap beer community to raise badly needed funds

Lana Svitankova is a Ukrainian beer writer and educator who normally works at Varvar brewery in Kyiv. (Supplied)

Lana Svitankova is angry and grief-stricken but, perhaps only for a brief moment, hopeful.

The Ukrainian beer educator and writer has had messages of solidarity and support flow in from around the world since the launch of Drinkers for Ukraine, a fundraising campaign for war-affected Ukrainians.

"They give me a minute, a moment of solace and respite," Ms Svitankova said.

The Drinkers for Ukraine campaign was initiated by a small team of European beer industry experts who, like so many around the world, have watched the war in Ukraine with a sense of horror and helplessness.

The Pravda brewery in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv recently made international headlines for converting its brewery to a molotov cocktail production line.

Lviv brewery ditches beer to make Molotov cocktails instead

"I think we've all been experiencing that sort of doom-scrolling, just seeing things that we never would have expected to have seen, not knowing how to process it or deal with it," said Brussels-based beer writer Eoghan Walsh. 

The campaign hopes to leverage the goodwill of drinkers and brewers around the world to raise money for the Red Cross humanitarian relief effort in Ukraine. 

Rather than direct donations to a central fund, the campaign has instead created a set of tools and directions for how people can fundraise in their own countries, and then make donations through the Red Cross. 

A man's house is destroyed in Russian artillery shelling in the village of Horenka close to Kyiv. (AP: Efrem Lukatsky)

Donations and commitments from around the world have begun pouring in, from the United States to South America and New Zealand. 

"If we could show our Ukrainian friends and brewers who are hiding in their bomb shelters in Kyiv and Lviv and Mariupol that people on the other side of the world in Australia are thinking about them, are brewing for them, are raising money for them, that makes a difference," Mr Walsh said.

Alongside auction items and a live-streamed fundraising event, the Drinkers for Ukraine campaign has released an open-source recipe for a fundraising solidarity brew. 

Fittingly, it is a beetroot-spiked Ukrainian "anti-imperial stout" called Resist. 

The campaign has released an open-source beer recipe for a "Ukrainian anti-imperial stout". (Supplied)

"That was like a crazy idea that you have when you're sleep-deprived and you don't think straight," said Ms Svitankova, who in normal times can be found promoting Ukrainian craft beer at Varvar brewery in Kyiv. 

Brewers big and small from all over the world are being encouraged to download and make the recipe for the anti-imperial stout, package it in yellow and blue colours, and sell it to raise funds.

Australian Independent Brewers Association chief executive Kylie Lethbridge said the local beer industry stood with those suffering in Ukraine.

"The concept of getting behind the people of Ukraine in whatever way, shape, or form can be done is something that should be encouraged," she said.

Beyond any money that could be raised for the Red Cross, Mr Walsh said the hope was also to show a sense of culture solidarity with the people of Ukraine.

"This is an unambiguous case of a country in need and a people in need, and we're trying to respond to that," he said.

"It's going to be a drop in the ocean compared to the funds that are required, but at least we've tried to help our friends. 

"We have contacts in Ukraine and Ukrainian beer industry and for them, it makes them feel a little bit less isolated to see that people are out there in the world trying to help them."

Ms Svitankova is safe outside of Ukraine. Her pain at seeing her fellow Ukrainians attacked has left her devastated, but she has taken a small comfort in feeling the connective tissue of a global community who stands in solidarity with her country.

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