Until this week Daniel Mediakovskyi was a history student in the Ukrainian city of Lviv. Since Sunday, however, he has been sticking rubber bands and plastic tops on to homemade bombs. “It’s practical history. It’s time for this right now,” he explained, loading another molotov cocktail into a crate.
Around him, about a dozen students and young creative professionals stood around a makeshift table. All wore masks and washing-up gloves. Each had a role in a busy production line. The basement bomb factory smelled strongly of petrol and paint remover – two molotov ingredients, along with polystyrene and silver dust.
Mediakovskyi – who is 20 – said his mother had woken him early last Thursday to tell him Russia had invaded Ukraine. “I knew it was going to start. My hands started shaking,” he said. After spending a day doom-scrolling on social media, he decided he would try to help.
“My parents know I’m volunteering. I haven’t told my granny. She’s worried enough about things already,” he admitted. He acknowledged that a molotov wouldn’t stop the mighty Russian army. But he stressed: “It will break Russian soldiers mentally, and show them they are not welcome here.”
One of the molotovs fell off the table-top and smashed. The team cleared off for 10 minutes, allowing time for the noxious fumes to disperse. A ground-floor window had been propped open to improve ventilation. Outside, snow fell.
Vladimir Putin’s campaign to seize and subjugate Ukraine has gone less well than the Kremlin might have hoped. Five days on, the Ukrainian army has fought back, blowing up Russian military convoys and deploying defensive weapons – some supplied by the US and UK – to devastating effect. Kyiv and other key cities have not fallen.
At the same time, an army of civilian volunteers have been contributing to the war effort amid an unprecedented upsurge in patriotic feeling. They have donated food, offered accommodation to people forced to flee from bombardment, and have weaved camouflage military nets while singing songs.
In Lviv, a former industrial complex used as a creative hub and rave space has been transformed into an improvised molotov factory. In one corner of the basement are stacks of bottles, some bearing stickers saying: “Apple juice, 1997”. In another, flowery linen squares, to be torn into strips and used as fuses.
“We call them Bandera smoothies,” Lily Eleanor, a 25-year-old PR for fashion brands said, referring to the Ukrainian wartime nationalist leader Stepan Bandera. How did she cope with the pungent working conditions? “I love the smell. It’s the smell of freedom. The Russians don’t know what they are doing here,” she said.
The volunteers – aged 18 to 35 – packed the finished molotovs into car boots, around 1,500 of them a day. They are then distributed via a trusted network of contacts, with some held in reserve in case Russia tries to seize Lviv. Tips on how to throw them at an invading enemy tank are swapped via Instagram and Facebook.
Yuliia Oliinyk, 23, said she had little sympathy for Russian conscripts her age or younger sent to fight in Ukraine, some of whom have been captured. “I’m a student of international relations. It’s really good preparation for bomb-making,” she joked. Ukraine had tried hard to find a diplomatic solution to avoid war, she said.
Olinnyk said that as well as making bombs she had taken classes in knife-fighting, grenade throwing and first aid. These skills were necessary because Ukraine had already spent eight years fighting Moscow and Russian-backed separatists in the Donbas. “Unfortunately, Russia is a part of our neighbourhood,” she said.
In normal times the bomb-making factory is home to creative businesses: production studios, artists, and tattoo parlours. It now houses refugees on the fifth floor, camped out on mattresses next to arc lights and a print of Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s soup can artwork. On the ground floor is a cafe and drop-off point for clothes donations.
Few of the young people making molotovs had ever thrown one. Bohdan Zhelobchuk, a user experience designer, said he had chucked a home-made bomb in 2014 in Kyiv, during the Maidan uprising against the country’s then pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych. “We made some cocktails back then. We started producing them again on Friday,” he said.
According to the Kyiv Independent news site, one of Lviv’s breweries had shifted production from beer to bombs. “Pravda Brewery team is hand-bottling today. It’s a very special bottling. So many people willing to help. We’ll bottle beer later,” one of the brewery’s employees, Yuri Zastavny, posted on Facebook.
Rodion Kadatskyi – a 25-year-old IT project manager from Mariupol – said not everybody was able to pick up a weapon and fight. Making bombs was another way of helping, he said. “The youth are moved by this patriotic spirit. Everyone now realises what he or she is capable of doing.”
