Extreme food delivery

A short extract from my book Bread and War and a little update about what’s happened since. And why Ukraine continues to need our support.

“You should understand that the Russians see us. They see our cars, they see us deliver bread, they see us get out and make photos. And you should also understand that they really want to kill us.” Vlad Malashchenko, the 28 year old owner of the Good Bread from Good People bakery, is driving a van filled with boxes of freshly baked bread along the impossibly treacherous road towards Siversk, a town in Donetsk region around five miles from the Russian front line. It is a nightmarish journey: all temporary bridges and dusty roads cut right through fields, military vehicles churning up the ground, under the constant boom of artillery somewhere not far in the distance. High overhead, impossible to see, there could well be Russian drones, watching as our little convoy bumps its way towards the devastated town. At the turning towards a narrow pontoon bridge, a young soldier stands alone, waving vehicles through one at a time, like a traffic warden dressed in full combat gear. Armoured personnel carriers rumble past, and a succession of olive drab pickup trucks, some with British licence plates, covered by hand-woven camouflage nets. This is the most extreme form of food delivery you could possibly get.

It is two years into the war, and before the journey to Siversk, the day began in another Donetsk region town, Kostyantinivka, where the road turns off towards Bakhmut. Vlad had arranged to drop off bread at a volunteer space providing practical help for soldiers just back from the zero line. Inside, the walls are unexpectedly decked out in shocking pink: in a former life, this had been a beauty parlour. There are shelves neatly stacked with hairdryers, soap and shampoo, showers and a room with washing machines, so that soldiers who had spent days in the freezing mud can wash and get clean clothes. No one is fazed by the ultra-feminine decor: indeed they seem happy to see it, volunteers taking bags of filthy combat clothes off their hands, ready with towels and hot tea and a place that for a few brief moments at least is ‘not war’. Two women are crouched in the back of a battered old van by the entrance, sorting through a mountain of tightly wrapped loaves. Many of Kostyantinivka’s residents came there for shelter, after fleeing homes occupied or destroyed by the Russian army, but a few weeks into 2024, just a few miles from the increasingly fluid grey zone, the place was itself turning into a battleground. Some days earlier, a guided air bomb and four S-300 missiles had destroyed the railway station, slamming into shops and nearby homes right in the centre of town.

We bump across railway tracks, and through a long alleyway flanked by huge, empty concrete buildings, towards a hangar which is being used as an aid warehouse: ‘it looks like the set of a film’, Yuri the driver remarks, revving the engine while boxes are stashed on board to take north to Lyman, where there’s another humanitarian hub waiting to receive supplies. It is the middle of a weekday morning but there is barely anyone outside: on the other side of the empty town square, the only decoration is an old hoarding which someone has painted with the slogan ‘Lyman is Ukraine’. Behind it, a destroyed three storey building which was once a school: the structure is completely wrecked, but inside it is still possible to make out a Snow White mural on one crumbling wall, while on another - the remains of a brightly coloured map of Ukraine, with the words to the national anthem taped underneath. The school’s roof is entirely gone: the staircase opens straight onto the sky. Tattered posters stuck to the doorway show information about how to arrange evacuation. But we are driving the other way, further east along the Luhansk road, to Siversk.

There are things you notice along these roads, apart from the incessant swerving around the jagged potholes. Pretty much every vehicle which passes is military: Vlad says that a few months ago, there were far more volunteer cars but now, hardly anyone comes: understandably exhausted, depleted of funds and resources, leaving places like Siversk increasingly forgotten and alone: “If we did not drive here, perhaps they would have nothing fresh to eat”. A few enterprises remain strung along the Lyman road, despite the dangerous location - tyre repair shops mingle with shawarma stands, fulfilling the twin essentials of life on the front line. We pass a small row of kebab stalls, with military vehicles parked up outside, soldiers jumping down from a tank to grab something hot to eat, snatching a brief moment or two of almost-normality.

The air seems almost different in Siversk, cold and hard, as if it was robbed of oxygen. The sounds of artillery are much louder: “Out” says Yuri, and counts to five before another bang “And in”. Pretty much every building is badly damaged: we drive past endless empty blocks of flats with gaping holes, burned out windows, shattered roofs.. Around ten thousand people once lived in Siversk: now there are just a few hundred residents left, those who simply refuse to leave, somehow surviving all this time in basements without electricity or water supplies, without internet or telephone lines, without any of the resources that make up modern life. Stray dogs and cats run around: there are huge bomb craters and great heaping skips of rubbish - it’s hard to imagine anyone coming here to collect it.”

I wrote this a few months ago for a chapter in my book Bread and War - the trip we made together to Donetsk region was a few months before that. Now, many of those places which we visited with aid supplies have become totally restricted zones, systematically bombarded and robbed of what little life there was. A combat medic on X posted about Lyman just the other day - not a single building is intact, she wrote - Lyman is a ghost town now. Kostyantynivka has been a key target for Russian forces who’ve been trying for weeks to encircle it. They have not succeeded, despite heavy Russian losses, but in the process most civilians have been evacuated and aid organisations have warned that those who remain face a humanitarian disaster.

Good Bread, and other charities, continue to work in the most difficult parts of Ukraine - their volunteers cannot reach the places they once went - but they still distribute bread where they can. They would bake more than they do at present, if they could raise more funds: you can support them at goodbread.com.ua/en-us and you can read the rest of this chapter about their remarkable work in my book. They are one of the incredible grassroots organisations I have had the privilege to meet. It really is an honour to share their stories.

You are also very welcome to come along to one of the talks I’m giving about the book:

Tuesday July 15th at the Honey & Co studio in London WC1

Sunday August 3rd at the Wilderness Festival Book Tent

Sunday September 21 at the Abergvenny Food Festival

Saturday October 11th at the Bury St Edmunds Literary Festival

Sunday October 12th at the Knighton literary festival

And some September dates TBC in Ukraine in September.