At the same time, the Federation helps through five volunteer kitchens, part of the help is also the so-called foodtruck – kitchen on wheels. These kitchens also saved the situation in Kyiv and its surroundings, where Russian attacks on power plants during the past winter caused massive electricity and heat blackouts.
“We were one of the organizations that cooked hot lunches for people. We knew how to respond promptly. We cooked 10,000 to 17,000 lunches every day. We first operated in Boryspil, where the situation was the worst, then we moved to Brovary. We also prepared hot lunches for people in the Holosiivsky District and Trojeshchyna (the most affected parts of Kyiv, where people stay during the winter they found themselves without heat, editor’s note),” says Škrabatovskyj.
Federation statistics show that from February 2025 to February 2026, mobile kitchens cooked almost half a million hot lunches for residents of Poltava, Sumy and Kharkiv regions. During the two months of harsh winter, they cooked more than 387,000 portions of food for people in the Kyiv region and the capital.
Škrabatovskyj pointed out that food banks also concentrate on the frontline areas.
“For example, a volunteer kitchen has been working in Kherson for three years, which we supply with food. Where there is fighting, the situation is not improving. Especially the elderly who remain in the shelled cities are paying the price,” he noted, adding that the last time he and his colleagues left Kherson, they were chased by a drone.
Jams saved them from starvation
Nata was one of the volunteers who helped pack humanitarian shipments for displaced people living in the Kyiv region.
He comes from the region in the south of Ukraine, which has been occupied by the Russians since 2022. So he knows very well what it means when a person leaves home and finds himself in a foreign environment with nothing. She described to me how the first days of the war were accompanied by confusion and fear. The previously safe routine dissolved in a second. Pharmacies and shops were closed, and getting food or drinking water meant standing in a long line. At the end of February, the Russians took control of the city, and with them great uncertainty and fear entered its borders.
“At the beginning of March, the frosts hit. The heating didn’t work, the gas supply was also cut off. We had nothing to cook with. Fortunately, we had a gas bottle. We lived in a house together with three other families, so we cooked outside. Every day my husband and I wandered around the city to get at least some food. We were saved by preserves and pasta. Each family received a ration – one bread. One bread regardless on how many members the family had,” recalls Nata.
At that time, you couldn’t find sanitary pads for women almost anywhere in the city. They literally became a rare currency of exchange. While before the war they could be bought for 50 hryvnias, during the occupation their price quadrupled. It was also a problem to get medicine or pellets for pets. Nata sometimes stood in line for five hours just to buy cat food.
“I myself know what it’s like to wait for help”
The family finally decided to evacuate the city. To this day, Nate still gets chills when he remembers the journey they had to take to get from the occupied city to free Ukrainian territory. The family had to pass through eighteen Russian checkpoints. At each of them, people leaving the occupied territory underwent a detailed check. For example, the men had to strip down to their underwear so that Russian soldiers could check for tattoos or bruises on the collarbones that might indicate that the person had been involved in the resistance.
A trip that would normally take three hours took thirteen hours in the spring of 2022.
“We civilians were told to put white ribbons on the rearview mirrors of our cars. To mark ourselves. When you go fast, pieces of cloth beat against the car. It’s like hearing a loud flapping of a bird’s wings. To this day, when I hear a flock of birds, I have an instant flashback (live survival of past trauma, editor’s note). We were very afraid then. I was in such a spasm that when we reached the destination, my hands were blue from how hard I was clutching them,” she described.
The family eventually found their new home in Kyiv. At the same time, helping other resettled people became a part of Nata’s life. She described that especially the beginnings tend to be difficult for them.
“You had a job at home and suddenly you’re unemployed. You had your circle of people, but it’s gone. The locals who haven’t experienced what you’ve experienced don’t understand you. And those who are in the same situation are divided into two categories – those who are trying to get out of a desperate state and those who are sinking deeper and deeper into it. I didn’t know what to do. I just wanted to be of some use. I have two healthy hands. She saw I’m how people come together and help, and I didn’t want to be left out. I wanted to climb out of that abyss,” she says.
And so, when he is free, he comes to the food bank warehouse.
“I myself know what it’s like to wait for help. And yet someone has to pack it.”
A spoonful of canned meat for buckwheat
Even Jevhenija, a native of Mariupol, comes to the humanitarian center with memories of how she and her neighbors starved in the besieged city in 2022.
“In the first week of the war, it was somehow bearable, but it started to get serious when we started running out of food. We lived in the basement, where there were around 300 other people. About half of them were children. Right in the first week of the war, the electricity went out – and the refrigerators stopped working. All the food that was in them went bad,” the volunteer recalled how the people of Mariupol found themselves at the beginning of the Russian invasion on the brink of a humanitarian disaster.
Jevhenija also says that people in Mariupol were saved by jams. As she described – all kinds of pickled tomatoes and cucumbers.
“It was useless for us to have stocks of potatoes or rice, because we had nowhere to cook them. You couldn’t stay on the street for long. A fire was started and a person could wait outside for the water to boil. It was too dangerous. That’s why we just poured hot water over the buckwheat, it couldn’t be cooked. We had canned meat, which we added to the buckwheat porridge by the spoonful to give it some flavor,” he describes.
In the hard-hit Mariupol, Yevhenija and her family endured for a month – in the end they decided to evacuate. According to her, they walked from the city for five days and had to pass through 26 Russian checkpoints.
“We experienced cold, hunger and all the terrible shelling. Today I go to help because I know what it’s like to escape from a combat zone with nothing but your passport. I vividly remember how volunteers (on the territory under the control of Ukraine, editor’s note) they gave food, clothes and basic things and how amazing they took care of us. It meant a lot to us,” he adds.
