Bobruisk was not always welcoming to foreigners. In 1812, the central Belarusian town’s fortress defied a 12,000-strong detachment of Napoleon’s Grande Armée for four months on his retreat from Moscow.

Things are different now. The town’s Syabar brewery has, since December, been owned by Heineken, the world’s fourth-largest brewer by volume, which bought it from a consortium of Russian-American private equity investors and the International Finance Corporation, the World Bank’s private-sector arm, for an undisclosed price.