Branded with victory, baked with love
At the Peremoha by Lubov bakery in Kyiv, they’ve now made an astonishing one million loaves to send to communities on the front line - I took a look inside.
Loaves in production
Lubov: it means love - and Peremoha means victory. And at the Peremoha by Lubov bakery - they've now baked an astonishing one million loaves of bread, given away free to soldiers and people in need. I took a cab across Kyiv to meet Lubov Dubova herself, and see the bakery in action. She met me in the small cafe which the bakery also operates, and led me round the back of a supermarket to some stairs leading down to a basement. Inside - despite the lack of windows - it was bright and buzzing with energy: one man was busy loading dough into a large mixer, a young woman was lifting trays of loaves into the deck ovens, while before they went in, another girl carefully sifted flour through a stencil with the word 'Peremoha' onto each loaf.
The bakers in action
The day I went in, it was just after the Russians had attacked the Nova Kakhovka dam in Kherson region: thousands of people had been evacuated, many more were dealing with power cuts and flooded homes. In a country where so many people were already in desperate need - there was suddenly a new emergency to deal with. "We are right now preparing seven hundred loaves to send to Kherson region", Lubov said: " and most of it, volunteers come here to collect boxes, and drive to where its needed, but we also send some through Nova Poshta".
Nova Poshta, for the uninitiated, is one of the great business innovation successes in Ukraine. It's an incredibly efficient overnight postal delivery service which will go anywhere, even right into the war zone itself - you take your package into one of the many drop-off sites and for a minimal cost, it will be delivered the next day to its destination.
These shelves will soon be full of bread
But Lubov has been expanding the bakery's reach herself - opening a second site in Mykolaiv, closer to the southern frontline areas where the bread is needed most. I promise to go there with her next time I'm in Ukraine. And there is another new intiative on the Saltivka estate in Kharkiv, which has been badly damaged by Russian attacks. I promise to visit that, too. "All people in need are expecting bread", she says. "So many people who were living in occupation and didn't have any chance to buy it". She opens her phone, and plays a video she's been sent: it shows an elderly lady trying to speak through tears. "She had been living in the occupied territory, she is saying they didn't have any bread for six months, she missed it so much."
And even if bread is available, it's expensive - prices have gone up and people who've already lost their homes and livelihoods are struggling to afford the basics. "One loaf of bread costs 30 hryvnias (about 80 pence ) - it's a lot for them. So this is a big help".
In one year of war, they made 680,000 free loaves
Inside the bakery kitchen, those loaves bearing the Peremoha name are ready to come out of the oven, the smell of freshly baked bread fills the air. Lubov slides one into a paper bag for me to take home, along with a little caramel filled pastry tart from the shop next door. I couldn't resist snatching a selfie of myself outside, clutching that loaf: branded with victory, baked with love.
