Air Raids and Italian Bitters: The Stubborn Madness of Kyiv’s Micro-Pub King

Before taking his seat, Sergei downs a hundred grams of vodka to “make it easier to talk”. It is a quintessential piece of preparation for a man whose entire life is built around reading human nature across a bar counter.

The Left Bank Superpower

Sergei’s journey into hospitality began in the “galleys” of old-school Ukrainian nightlife—a brutal era dominated by mega-chains that levied draconian fines for broken plates and treated staff like disposable slaves. He spent four years as a bartender at Cooper Pub, learning how to handle people after a few drinks.

It was at a Monday staff party eleven years ago—the traditional night off for restaurant workers—that he met Yuliia. They were broke students in different establishments, but the connection was instant. Years later, while working a shift, Sergei simply texted her: “Quit your job, let’s do something of our own”.

In the late summer of 2016, they bought a filthy, run-down basement with a terrible reputation in a courtyard on Kyiv’s Left Bank. Together, they scrubbed every inch, launching Britannia Pub. It was here that Sergei discovered what he considers his personal superpower: acting as a conversation moderator.

“People love to talk about politics, sports, and faith after a few drinks,” Sergei explains. “A good bartender stands there like a moderator. When the conversation drifts out of bounds, you gently correct the course”.

The Center, the Galleys, and the Luhansk Connection

The left-bank courtyard success prompted an ambitious leap to the city center, opening Queens Pub on Antonovycha Street. Sergei launched it as a 24/7 venue with four bartenders, eight waiters, and a full kitchen crew. It flopped almost immediately.

Rather than quitting, Sergei sold the original left-bank pub, fired the hired staff, and stood behind the bar himself. Regulars from the suburbs followed him to the center, drawn by a owner who was genuinely glad to see them.

His next gamble was opening Na Podoli Pub during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. “I am a dreamer,” he admits. “I do first, then think”. The venue suffered from the rise of “freelance” kitchen staff—gig workers who cared only about today’s pay check rather than tomorrow’s prep. Realizing the location didn’t suit his long-haul ethos, Sergei sold the business to an internally displaced family from the Luhansk region. Today, his close friend Maksym runs it, and the venue remains a beloved “brother-in-arms” establishment.

Bitters, Pink Tutus, and the War

Before the 2022 full-scale invasion, Sergei’s British pub sat on a conveyor belt of foreign tourism. Weekend after weekend, British stag parties arrived, often dressing the groom in a pink tutu while draining the bar’s supply of imported Heineken.

When war broke out, the stag parties vanished overnight. Heineken disappeared from the menu—Ukrainians refused to pay premium prices for locally licensed beer, and foreign tourists were gone. Today, the subterranean basement serves a very different clientele: off-duty soldiers, war correspondents, and weary locals taking shelter during air-raid alarms.

In the middle of the war, when a competitor’s space directly next door became vacant, Sergei jumped at the lease. Where Gorky Pub once stood, Sergei and Yuliia built Amaro Bar. Playing on the name (“Gorky” means bitter in Russian, “Amaro” means bitter in Italian), they created a blue-hued “not pub” focusing on Italian liqueurs, grissini, and fine cheeses. It was Sergei’s tribute to Yuliia’s background at high-end dining group La Famiglia. Its motto: “Bitter, but in its own way”.

A Family Affair and the “Moby Dick” Dream

Sergei drains the last of his “hundred grams,” checking his watch not for incoming drones, but because the Formula 1 race starts in half an hour. It is precisely this brand of pragmatic, slightly unhinged defiance that makes Kyiv’s wartime hospitality scene so utterly intoxicating. You can bomb the power grid, you can shatter the pavement, but you cannot stop a determined Ukrainian from opening a basement bar and showing the most popular sporting events.

His “Moby Dick”—that elusive, perfect pub concept—remains securely locked in his imagination for now, an unwritten menu waiting for a peacetime address. Yuliia, ever the sensible stabiliser, is currently holding the frontline against his relentless expansionism, politely nodding along to his manic real-estate pitches before flatly telling him they aren’t opening anything else. Yet, sitting across from him in this blue-hued venue, one gets the distinct, terrifying impression that it is only a matter of time. The moment the dust settles—or perhaps merely shifts slightly—she will inevitably sigh, roll her eyes, and let him sign another lease.

Until that glorious, financially dubious day arrives, Sergei remains exactly where he belongs: standing behind his own counter. He is the cheerfully chaotic moderator of a subterranean sanctuary, pouring pints and Italian bitters for off-duty soldiers, sleep-deprived locals, and the occasional shell-shocked foreign correspondent. He understands a fundamental truth that escapes most politicians: when the world above ground is actively falling apart, the most radical, life-affirming act you can perform is offering a weary stranger a decent drink and a safe corner to simply be themselves.

It takes a very specific, beautiful kind of madness to look at a bruised capital and envision a thriving post-war renaissance of veteran-owned micro-pubs. Sergei possesses exactly that madness. And if sheer, stubborn optimism isn’t quite enough to drag this city over the finish line, he always has a seemingly bottomless supply of vodka to bridge the gap.

The full video of our sit-down with Sergei will be dropping on YouTube very soon. Do yourself a favour and hit subscribe so you’re the first to be notified—because if there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s that witnessing the madness of running a wartime pub is always better in high definition.