980-Foot Vodka Pipeline Led to Man's Home

Officials in Ukraine say it was used to smuggle cheap alcohol across border
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 21, 2022 4:58 PM CDT

The war in Ukraine apparently hasn't put bootleggers out of business. Authorities say border officials patrolling near Podislk in southwest Ukraine found a 980-foot vodka pipeline that was being used to smuggle booze from the breakaway Moldovan region of Transdinistria, Vice reports. The "polyethlene pipe stretched from the state border underground in the direction of the private home of a 32-year-old citizen of Ukraine," a Ukrainian government statement said.

The "discovered highway was used for the illegal transfer of alcohol to Ukraine from the Transnistrian segment of the Moldovan-Ukrainian border," the government said. Such pipelines are commonly used by smugglers trying to move cheap vodka between countries of the former Soviet Union, Slate noted in 2013 after a 1,640-foot pipeline fom Kazakhstan to Kyrgyzstan was uncovered. (More vodka stories.)

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