Why is Ukraine attacking Russian distilleries?

On the evening of October 27, drones attacked the Ethanol Spirit distillery near the city of Novokhopersk, Voronezh region. This was the second such raid in a week.

Governor of the Voronezh region Alexander Gusev said that the drone “fell on the roof of an outbuilding” and some “containers.” According to the official, there were no fires or casualties.

An enterprise in the neighboring Annensky district of the same Voronezh region survived a similar raid. There, a likely target could be the local distillery or the Annanefteprodukt oil depot.

Previously, a drone raid on Russian distilleries took place on October 22. Then enterprises in the Tula, Tambov and Voronezh regions were damaged.

Dozens of attack drones were involved in the operation.

Alcohol for military purposes

Last year, Russians bought record volumes of alcoholic beverages. On average, in 2023, there will be eight liters of pure alcohol per person in the country - this is a record for the last nine years.

However, Ukrainian authorities say they are destroying distilleries for military purposes. The head of the center for countering disinformation of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Andrei Kovalenko, said that Ukrainian UAVs are indeed attacking Russian distilleries. But he emphasized that these enterprises could well be considered “military facilities.”

“Russians use distilleries to produce not only alcohol, but also various types of fuel for military needs and explosives. That’s why they are attacked,” he claims. “These are all military installations, even if they are disguised as something else.”

According to him, rocket and aviation fuel and explosives are made at distilleries. Also, alcohol, according to him, is necessary in aviation: it is added to fuel, brake systems, cleaning fluids and de-icers.

Is this really true?

Alcohol can actually be used to make explosives. More precisely, first, through hydrolysis, it is converted into ethylene glycol, and then into the explosive compound ethylene glycol dinitrate (EGDN), also known as nitroglycol.

Pure nitroglycol was first obtained in 1870 by the Belgian chemist Louis Henry by adding a small amount of ethylene glycol to a mixture of nitric and sulfuric acids cooled to 0°C. In 1914 in Germany it was used as an antifreeze for dynamite.

During World War II, due to glycerol shortages, EGDN was used in smokeless powders. However, later, due to the high toxicity of EGDN, its use in military affairs was almost stopped. But terrorists sometimes continued to use it to make homemade bombs.

In other non-civilian uses of alcohol compounds, for example, polyethylene glycol is used in some solid rocket fuel components. The use of alcohols in military medicine is widely known.

The enterprises attacked by drones, as indicated on their websites and noted in the Russian media, actually supply their products to the Russian defense complex.

For example, JSC Biokhim (Tambov region) reports on its website that it is a supplier of products for more than 500 Russian enterprises, in particular the defense, aerospace complexes, nuclear industry, and navy.

Experts' doubts

However, military experts have expressed polar opposite opinions about the effectiveness of attacks on distilleries.

For example, Russian military analyst Ruslan Leviev (declared a “foreign agent” in Russia) writes that alcohol is almost no longer used in aviation.

“All of these anti-icing systems work on glycol solutions, which are obtained from ethylene glycol. Ethylene glycol has not been made from alcohol for about 70 years, it is made directly from ethylene,” he notes.

He also writes that adding ethanol to gasoline is a rare practice in Russia, and it has nothing to do with aviation at all.

As for the use of alcohol for the production of gunpowder, Leviev says that a “tiny amount” of it is used there, and besides, it itself is not consumed, since it does not evaporate in the process.

“You can destroy half of all distilleries in Russia - no one will even notice this in the production of gunpowder,” the analyst summarizes.

At the same time, another Russian military expert, Vasily Dandykin, believes that these UAV strikes can cause damage to Russian aviation: “They are clearly not hitting distilleries so that our people drink less. I think these strikes are related to military targets.”

“The fact is that alcohol is used not only for the production of alcohol and food products, but also in industry, including in medicine and even in aviation: a certain liquid for aircraft is created based on alcohol, which, for example, protects them from icing.” , he said in an interview with Moskovsky Komsomolets.

Ukrainian aviation expert Vitaly Romanenko told the BBC Ukrainian Service that he knows from his own experience about the use of alcohol in aviation. But, according to him, we are talking only about degreasing in the production of radio electronics.

The BBC's interlocutor, associated with the military leadership of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, did not directly answer the question about the practical meaning of attacks on Russian distilleries, but noted that these facilities were the least protected by air defense and electronic warfare (EW) means.

“In recent months, Russia has significantly strengthened its air defense; it has become much more difficult for our drones to overcome this defense. And these objects were less covered,” he explained.