Good morning to readers; #Kyiv remains in #Ukrainian hands.
Russian military forces hit #Ukrainian grain facilities for a fifth day this week. Our main character today is Katrya, who saved her sourdough starter from her hometown while on the run from Russian forces.
As Katrya Kalyuzhna fled her hometown of Kherson due to the Russian invasion, she grabbed the things most precious to her in the world: her two cats, of course; the keys to her van…
… and her precious, five-year-old sourdough starter.
"going through so many Russian checkpoints, their questioning and other disgusting things: driving through the gray zone, the no man’s land between occupied and Ukrainian held territory…the sound of artillery shelling, it was endless."
A war correspondent's open notebook, reporting live from Kyiv. Compelling human stories that illustrate what’s happening during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Click to read The Counteroffensive with Tim Mak, a Substack publication with tens of thousands of subscribers.
About a week after arriving in #Lviv, she tried to do what had always made her calm: baking Using the sourdough starter which she had brought along, she made what she dubbed her “bread in exile.”
#Baking, it turned out, was incredibly healing. She even posted the brief recipe on her Instagram, and other people started using it. The social media app led her to a new friend, a woman named Vasylyna, who also lived in Lviv.
She offered Katrya (left) a job in her microbakery.
While their story is heartwarming, wheat in Ukraine has a dark history too. During the Soviet-made famine known as Holodomor in the 1930s, millions of Ukrainians lost their lives after the USSR confiscated grain and food, trapping people in their homes to die of hunger.
Katrya feels there are echoes of that time in today’s war. She describes recent attacks on grain infrastructure in Odesa as “horrible and devastating.” A year ago, she watched as wheat fields burned near her hometown.
Tim Mak
L Ellis