A life in fragments

The Kharkiv cafe and bakery which I love to visit was bombed at the turn of the year. Like so many places in this iron city, it has reopened - boards over the shattered windows, but open again.

Kharkiv’s Freedom Square

I am currently preparing to set off on a long trip to Ukraine - and I will be definitely spending some more time in Kharkiv, where I can catch up with some of my favourite places. Starting with our priest friend, Pastor Dmytro in the North Saltivka district. My colleagues at Bake for Ukraine managed to purchase everything which he needed to set up the volunteer baker which he had dreamed of starting in the basement of his Baptist church. They bought it from a place in Odesa which was sadly going out of business and needed to find a new home for all their equipment - and had it all delivered to Kharkiv on New Year's Eve. Co-founder Mykola Nevrev also carried out online baking classes for the pastor's volunteers - guiding them through the whole process of baking a simple sourdough palyanytsya loaf, and making it as uncomplicated as possible. Then they sent several tonnes of flour so the church could carry out some test runs. I'm looking forward to seeing the little bakery in action - helping to supply bread to families in the district whose lives - and livelihoods - have been left in ruins by Russia's constant attacks.

Bake for Ukraine’s photo of the equipment on its way to Kharkiv

Kharkiv, Ukraine's second city - has come under even more sustained bombardment since the start of this year. Missiles launched from just across the Russian border take barely a minute to arrive - leaving residents precious little time to scramble to some kind of shelter, usually a bathroom or a corridor with no windows. There's little use in waiting for an air raid siren to warn of an incoming attack, as they often go off just moments before an explosion. Instead it's a hurried scan through local telegram channels to check what kind of missiles are flying and where.

Since December 30th, two well-known hotels where foreign journalists and aid workers often stay, were badly damaged by missiles: another strike, three days later hit a courtyard surrounded by residential blocks of flats in the city centre. It landed yards from a bakery which I have also written about here - Pouhque, in the basement of the popular Pakufuda cafe. All the windows were shattered, a wall crumbled, the ceiling was damaged - while huge shards of debris and rubble lay scattered outside. Fortunately nobody from the cafe was hurt. Pakufuda's co-owner Lilia Muntian told a local newspaper that twenty people turned up immediately to help clear up the broken glass, while a regular customer and friend called Roman Pylypenko set up a fundraising account to help pay for the repairs. I was among the many who sent a donation and shared the link: very soon he had raised more than £5000.

Nakypilo’s report on the Jan 2 attack

Pouhque bakery, which is in the basement below the cafe, managed to resume baking for takeaway customers within a couple of days - and by the end of the week, its windows covered in the plasterboard which is such a depressingly familiar sight in Kharkiv, Pakufuda had re-opened. Imagine the resilience, the energy, the determination that takes: it must be incredibly hard to run a coffee shop at the best of times, let alone during a war. And along with the boarded up shop fronts, there is a sound which has become part of life for so many Ukrainians: the crunch of broken glass underfoot, and the peculiar swishing sound of people sweeping up piles of glass and shards of wood and chunks of plaster: pieces of ordinary life, torn from their place, all because Russia decides that today they will bomb a cafe, and destroy more peoples' homes. But in the face of all that, a community of friends, coming together and cleaning it up - finding the life beneath the fragments again.