Feeding close to the front line

As the fighting intensifies, communities living close to the front line are increasingly exposed to food insecurity. Mobile kitchens, the fruit of a partnership with a Ukrainian organization, provide an emergency response and help create social ties for the most isolated people.

After more than three years of conflict, cooking or simply eating has become a daily challenge for many Ukrainians. By 2025, 36% of the Ukrainian population will be in need of humanitarian aid, and 15% will require urgent assistance to feed themselves properly, according to the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

In the areas closest to the front line, air strikes and the proximity of the fighting have forced many businesses to close, making access to essential resources such as food, water, electricity and gas extremely limited for those unable or unwilling to leave their homes. The loss of livelihoods and soaring prices have only exacerbated food insecurity.

To support those most affected by food insecurity, Action Against Hunger (ACF) and its local partner K12, with the support of the Italian Agency for Cooperation and Development (AICS), have set up mobile kitchens that distribute hot meals on a daily basis. At the end of this program, 2,400 vulnerable people living in villages in the Kharkiv and Donetsk regions, bordering the front line, will receive food aid.

Food insecurity threatens the most vulnerable

In these remote and rural villages, some families are forced to adopt negative short-term survival strategies, such as skipping meals, reducing food portions or opting for cheaper foods containing fewer essential nutrients. Displaced people with limited resources, as well as the elderly, who are often isolated or disabled, are the most likely to find themselves in a situation of food insecurity.

Lidya Taranenko hails from the village of Levkivka, in the Kharkiv region. Leaning on her wooden cane, she painfully recalls the beginning of the war, when she lived under the control of Russian forces. “Everything around me was destroyed during that period. There was a lot of military equipment, artillery and many armed soldiers in the village. The soldiers stole from people’s homes, humiliated the inhabitants and fired warning shots. We no longer left our homes”.

Lidiya lives with her chronically ill son. But as there is no pharmacy in the village, the family struggles to obtain medicines. What’s more, the only store where they can buy food is a mobile store, which visits the village twice a week. Most of the inhabitants have few resources at their disposal, and depend essentially on their livestock or the vegetables from their gardens to feed themselves.

During the winter months, when temperatures drop below 0 degrees, life in this rural region can be particularly harsh. “We’ve been through periods when there was no electricity or water in the village. The village has no central gas supply or heating system. So, to heat my house and cook my food, I have to heat the wood-burning stove every day, but wood is sometimes hard to come by,” explains Mykola Kalashnyk, a pensioner from Levkivka.