Despite the horrors of war and their associated effects on businesses, Ukraine’s vodka producers continue to display resilience and optimism. By Oli Dodd
On 24 February, the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces entered its fourth year. While artillery and drone-assisted strikes have become all too familiar an occurrence for the residents of the country’s population centres, on the ground life goes on. The same is true for the country’s many vodka producers who have continued production amid the conflict.
“Almost every night there are some drone attacks on the cities, and people are dying,” says Yuriy Sorochynskiy, chief executive of Nemiroff vodka. “It’s terrible, it’s ridiculous to say, but it’s the routine of war. We try to keep things as business as usual as possible. We are still living in and working in a country with a full-scale invasion.”
Among the innumerable headaches that are associated with operating a business during wartime is manpower. On the first day of the full-scale invasion, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed a decree on the general mobilisation of the population. In 2024, to replace battlefield losses, a new law was ratified to lower Ukraine’s army mobilisation age from 27 to 25 and lower conscription age to 18.
“We have a big problem with employees because a lot have been recruited to the army,” explains Sorochynskiy. “As a big company, we’re permitted to reserve 50% of our male employees not to be conscripted, but the other 50% can be. It’s not just a problem for Nemiroff; people with specific skills like engineering or electricians are useful for the army.”
Of course, the other side is the damage to production facilities and warehouses that almost every Ukrainian business has a story about. In late 2025, a container holding about 17,000 bottles of Nemiroff was destroyed in an attack on the Black Sea port city of Odesa.
“The container was destroyed by drones while it was in a seaport,” says Sorochynskiy. “That’s a part of our life now; we’ve learned to disregard those obstacles. On the last day of August 2024, one of our suppliers’ facilities was almost completely destroyed. In the morning, when I heard about the damage, I made a call to them and told them that we’ve got an empty warehouse, and that they could move in and immediately restart production. Of course, some materials were destroyed, but now, this supplier is located near our distillery, and they are operating. We support our suppliers; they support us. There are cases like that all over Ukraine.”
Dima’s vodka is produced in Zhytomyr, a city about 100km west of Kyiv. Various factors meant the brand went almost a year without stock but has recently resumed production with bottles, newly emblazoned with sunflowers to represent Ukrainian resilience, set to reappear on shelves ahead of the country’s Independence Day on 24 August.
“We ran out of stock at the end of August 2025,” explains the brand’s founder Dima Deinega.
“First the distillery got privatised; obviously the whole scenario around privatisation is not top of the government’s to-do list, so that stopped everything. Luckily, they kept on all the same people, and the majority of the money from the sale went to the front or to support the war effort. Then it was winter and supply chains slowed down, and then there was energy rationing. At the beginning of the year, the whole of Ukraine had electricity rationing as a result of strikes on power stations and the electrical grid.”
In order to circumvent these energy restrictions, larger producers like Nemiroff or Bayadera Group installed private generators across their facilities.
“Then, there were issues with glass factories,” continues Deinega. “We were going to use a friend of mine’s distillery called Honey Badger; they make amazing liqueurs, but the distillery got hit. It was hit by a drone, and then two weeks later a cruise missile directly hit one of their warehouses, and they lost all their stock.”
Ultimately, the lack of stock became Deinega’s tool for continuing the conversation about the invasion within the industry.
“Because it’s about helping and supporting during the war, it became a way of telling people that the war’s still going on,” he says. “In a weird way, because we didn’t have the vodka that supports charity, the company became fully focused on charity. Now, raising awareness is the number one thing for me. It has been since 24 February 2022. Did I ever expect to have to talk about death and terrible things the whole time? No, but that becomes a part of what you have to do. It’s a sad reality, but I’m very lucky that I’m in a position where I can do it, and I can do it via a product that is uniquely Ukrainian.”
Rising costs
Now Ukrainian industry is facing a new challenge. Since 28 February, the US and Israel have been at war with Iran, a result of which has been the widespread disruption of global supply networks and a steep increase in the costs of fuel and materials.
“The issues in the Middle East have caused a huge impact on fuel and some blockages to our sea container deliveries,” says Sorochynskiy. “We had stock for the Emirates that was stuck for three months.
“Now they’re coming back to us and starting to place orders, and we’re starting to be able to deliver. But the cost of logistics and added security became ridiculous. I hope that the second half of the year will be much better than the first.”
But despite all the challenges, on paper the domestic industry is in phenomenal health. The latest issue of The Millionaires’ Club saw uniform growth across the country’s largest brands. Bayadera Group’s Oxygenium, Hlibny Dar and Kozatska Rada saw year-on-year growth between 2024 and 2025 of 20%, 5% and 3.2% respectively. Global Spirits’ Pshenychna Slyoza went from 2.1 to 6.1 million nine-litre cases, an increase of almost 200% in 12 months. But despite the headlines, underneath the numbers there’s a different story.
“It’s not that Ukrainians started drinking more during the war; average consumption per capita has not increased,” says Sorochynskiy.
“The local vodka market used to be split. Before 2022, we had a transparent legal market and a shadow market that existed because of the high taxation for spirits. It used to be that about 50% of the market was operating out of the view of the government and not paying excise tax.
“In 2022, the government started to force these producers to start paying taxes or they would be shut down, and it’s meant that, for the transparent producers in Ukraine, we’ve had a big increase in our volumes.”
While the tap being turned off on an existing supply of cheaper alcohol might draw the ire of the public under normal circumstances, attitudes towards taxes have shifted on the home front.
“A big part of it is that Ukrainians became more patriotic,” continues Sorochynskiy. “People understand that if they are not buying products that pay taxes, money will not get to the military because all our taxes are directed to support the military.
“We’re at the end of the value chain process; we’re assembling a final product. That means that there’s a big part of the Ukrainian economy behind us, people with companies, people receiving salaries which they pay taxes on too.
“Before the full-scale invasion, we were at around 3 million cases. Now it’s 4.5 million cases. We export 1.2 million cases, and it’s about an extra one million cases that we’re selling in Ukraine.”
So, while the market is essentially steady, for the country’s established, legitimate spirits enterprises, there is genuine momentum that Nemiroff is keen to capture. In 2024, the brand signed a sponsorship agreement with four English Premier League clubs and two rugby clubs in Australia the following year. Then in October 2025, after many years of knocking on the door, the brand was listed in the UK’s largest retailer, Tesco. Amid the destruction, there’s optimism.
“We have the ambition to be the number three premium vodka globally,” says Sorochynskiy. “The whole team is working towards making these plans a reality. People are buying into the company’s long-term vision and the whole team is involved in executing the processes and working towards the same things.”
The invasion may have destroyed old trade networks between Russia and other ex-Soviet markets, but it has strengthened ties with Europe, North America and other international markets. Alongside the overhauling of the sizable domestic market, which has created a more above-board industry, Ukrainian vodka has become an international proposition with growing brand power.
