“A Thousand Pies a Day”: How Kharkiv’s Chervona Kalyna Charity Keeps Working Through the War
By Matthew Parish
Thursday 24 September 2026
Matthew Parish, Editor-in-Chief of the Lviv Herald, interviews Ludmila Katkova, head of the Chervona Kalyna Kharkiv Charitable Foundation
The Chervona Kalyna Kharkiv Charitable Foundation was not conceived in a boardroom. It emerged spontaneously from a student dormitory in Kharkiv during the first days of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. Faced first with frightened foreign students who needed feeding, then Ukrainian territorial defence personnel, soldiers and waves of displaced civilians, the people running the dormitory simply began to cook.
What started with improvised meals developed into an organised charitable foundation. Today Chervona Kalyna says that approximately 3,500 internally displaced people are registered with it. Its volunteers cook, distribute humanitarian assistance, support children from displaced families and provide food and other supplies to soldiers and volunteers travelling towards the front. Its bakery, which began by producing a handful of pies, now makes as many as 1,000 a day.
Matthew Parish, Editor-in-Chief of the Lviv Herald, visited the foundation in Kharkiv and interviewed its head, Ludmila Katkova, about how the organisation came into existence, how humanitarian needs have changed after more than four years of full-scale war and why its volunteers continue working despite bombardment, shortages and an increasingly acute lack of international assistance. The interview was conducted in Russian and has been translated into English and lightly edited for clarity. Two recordings/transcripts of the conversation have been reconciled to produce the text below.
Matthew Parish, Editor-in-Chief, Lviv Herald: Please tell us how the Chervona Kalyna Kharkiv Charitable Foundation came into existence. When and why did you decide to create the organisation, and what did you initially do?
Ludmila Katkova: In February 2022 this was a student dormitory. Students lived here and I was the commandant. I came to work early in the morning when the war began. There were many students here waiting for instructions about when they could leave. There were around 100 Chinese students in particular.
The war continued for a day, then two days, then a week, and they had to be fed. They were all very frightened. Our territorial defence forces were positioned all around us as well, and those soldiers also needed feeding. We had never intended to cook for people. We were not cooks. But the war imposed its own rules.
We had one kitchen here and then another, so we started preparing food and feeding people. It simply became bigger and bigger. Soldiers started coming. Eventually the students all left, but then we would receive telephone calls saying that there were soldiers somewhere in the tree lines who had not eaten for three or four days. I would put on a bulletproof vest, take our food containers and go there to feed them.
We carried on feeding people like this throughout the year. Then we started making camouflage nets. After that we gradually started baking pies. At first it was ten, then twenty, then fifty. Today we bake as many as 1,000 pies a day. They all go somewhere: to displaced people, children and soldiers. That is how we live. In 2022 we formally established the Chervona Kalyna Kharkiv Charitable Foundation.
Matthew Parish: How did the full-scale Russian invasion change the organisation? Did you have to reorganise everything during the first weeks of the war?
Ludmila Katkova: Before 2022 there was no foundation. Students simply lived here and studied at the Academy of Design and Arts. The foundation was formally organised during the summer of 2022.
Its purpose has remained very simple ever since: to feed people and to help them. Even today we went to another dormitory and fed elderly women there. That is what we continue doing.
Matthew Parish: What are the principal areas of your work today? Whom does Chervona Kalyna primarily help?
Ludmila Katkova: We mainly help internally displaced people. At present we have approximately 3,500 displaced people registered with us, and more continue to arrive because evacuations are still taking place from areas towards the border, including the Bohodukhiv and Zolochiv directions.
People come here because they need humanitarian assistance and clothes, and we give them food as well. We also help the military a great deal, principally with food and whatever else we are able to provide.
The soldiers mostly ask us for things that do not spoil and that they can take with them when they go to the front: packaged food, water, energy drinks and similar supplies. We also work with children. Every week we bring together children from displaced families, give them something nice to eat and organise activities for them.
Matthew Parish: How do you decide who needs assistance most urgently?
Ludmila Katkova: Today our first priority is people who have only just been evacuated and have just arrived. They have not yet found work and they are often still under enormous stress. It is extremely difficult for them. They have left their homes and, in many cases, everything they possessed.
Those are the people we try to help first. We also give priority to soldiers who are heading directly towards frontline positions, including in the Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk directions. Sometimes they arrive here, take whatever supplies they can and then go straight to their positions. We try particularly hard to help them.
Matthew Parish: How has the humanitarian situation in Kharkiv changed as the full-scale war has continued? What are the most serious problems now?
Ludmila Katkova: The situation has changed considerably because the European assistance that existed in 2022 and 2023 is no longer arriving in anything like the same way. Now practically nobody helps us. We try to find things ourselves and we submit grant applications, but so far we have not had any success.
We do not have donors from whom we know that, on the first day of every month, a certain sum of money will arrive and we will therefore be able to pay the utility bills. In winter it is extremely cold here. We have to heat the premises using stoves, which means finding firewood. We have to find virtually everything ourselves. At present it is extremely difficult.
Matthew Parish: Do you operate on the front line itself, or do you also work elsewhere in Kharkiv region?
Ludmila Katkova: We do not go directly to the front line. Instead, we provide food for volunteers and others who do go there. We travel outside Kharkiv, within approximately 100 kilometres, including to villages where there are many displaced people.
There are many children in some of those places. We have been looking after them since 2022. We congratulate them at the beginning of the school year and take them presents. Recently we travelled out to organise a celebration for children and mark the beginning of the school year. But we do not ourselves travel directly onto the front line.
Matthew Parish: Are there places where it is simply too dangerous or difficult for your organisation to go?
Ludmila Katkova: Yes. There are places that are extremely dangerous and difficult to reach. We know volunteers who travel to those areas. They send us requests for food, medicines and other supplies, and we collect what they need and hand it over to them.
We do not try to do everything ourselves. There are other foundations and volunteers specialising in reaching those particularly dangerous places, and we support them instead.
Matthew Parish: Kharkiv is regularly subjected to Russian missile, drone and aerial attacks. What happens to your work after serious attacks on the city?
Ludmila Katkova: After four years of war, I do not know whether one can say that we have become accustomed to it, because you cannot really become accustomed to war. But sometimes it is almost as though we no longer hear it. Of course the human fear remains. There is constant shelling.
We do not generally run down to the basement any more. The premises here were badly damaged in 2022 and 2023. Windows were destroyed, and we have had serious problems with heating and water. Yet the foundation has never stopped working for a single day because of that.
There have been many occasions when we had no electricity. We worked by candlelight. More recently volunteers bought us power banks, for which we are very grateful, and we connect our equipment to those. The stoves keep working and somehow we find enough light to continue.
We now have only one day off, Saturday. On the other days work begins at 5.30 in the morning. The bakery starts, the kitchen starts, and we already know that soldiers may be coming, or that we will be going to feed elderly women, or that children will be coming, or that volunteers who have previously requested supplies for the front will arrive. That is how we work continuously.
Matthew Parish: Where does the foundation obtain its food, clothing, medicines and other essential supplies? How dependent are you upon private donations and foreign assistance?
Ludmila Katkova: At present it is extremely difficult. Kristin helps us whenever he can and raises donations for us when possible, but otherwise things are very difficult indeed. There is practically no money.
When even a small amount of money arrives, it goes immediately towards what we need. Today, for example, we went to the market and bought cabbage and peppers. The money comes in, we buy the food and it goes straight into the kitchen.
There was more assistance at the beginning of the war. Now there is very little. That is why we would very much like to obtain grant funding and find an organisation able to provide us with more regular support.
Matthew Parish: Do you cooperate with other Ukrainian or international charitable organisations?
Ludmila Katkova: Yes, we cooperate with Ukrainian organisations. International organisations hardly help us now. At the beginning of the war foreign assistance existed, but it was mostly in the form of goods and medicines. We ourselves have never received substantial direct financial assistance from an international foundation.
Kristin raises donations for us and individual volunteers help in smaller ways, but we have never had a large institutional donor or major grant supporting our work.
Matthew Parish: Many foreigners want to help Ukraine but worry about whether their money or humanitarian assistance actually reaches the people who need it. How do you demonstrate to donors where their assistance goes?
Ludmila Katkova: Whenever we receive something, we distribute it and document what we have done. Today, for example, we received a small quantity of sweets for children from another Ukrainian charitable foundation — only a few boxes.
We gathered the children, gave them the chocolates and gave sweets to their mothers. When we receive donations like that, we make videos and take photographs showing their distribution and send those materials to the donors. They can see what happened to what they gave us.
Matthew Parish: Is it harder to raise money now than it was earlier in the war? Do you see what is sometimes called “Ukraine fatigue” among foreign donors?
Ludmila Katkova: Yes, today it is very difficult. We are tired of the war ourselves, and Europe may be even more tired of hearing about the war in Ukraine. Perhaps it has become increasingly difficult for people there to continue helping.
Whatever the reasons, from our perspective raising assistance has become extremely difficult. We experience that problem every day.
Matthew Parish: Is there a difference between what donors think Kharkiv needs and what people actually need on the ground?
Ludmila Katkova: Very often people send ordinary second-hand clothes that they have collected. We already have quite a lot of that sort of clothing. Of course people who have lost everything need many different things, but there are other needs that are particularly acute.
Winter is coming, for example. People need heaters, small power banks and battery-powered lights because the electricity may be switched off. Someone who has been evacuated may have lost everything and arrived carrying only one bag and wearing whatever clothes they had on. Such people need almost everything.
Yet the things we repeatedly received were clothes, clothes and more clothes. We have rarely received the power banks, heaters and similar practical equipment that people now particularly need.
Matthew Parish: Are there particular displaced families whose stories have remained with you?
Ludmila Katkova: At the beginning of 2022 people began arriving from Dvorichna district, right on the Russian border. They were among the first people to hear and see the war. They began making their way towards Kharkiv however they could, sometimes on foot.
That community found us in 2022. Today there are probably more than 2,000 people from that area whom we have helped. We know many of them by sight because they have been coming to us for years. We were among the first people to receive them when they arrived in Kharkiv.
I particularly remember one young family. The mother arrived with one small child. We helped her with children’s clothes, a cot and everything else we could provide. Since then her family has grown and she now has four wonderful children. She still comes to us. We help with baby food, clothes and whatever else we can.
We have known the family throughout these years. The children’s father was the head of a border post and is now serving elsewhere. There are many families like this whom we have come to know personally.
Matthew Parish: What do you see in the people who remain in Kharkiv despite the constant danger? Why do so many people refuse to leave?
Ludmila Katkova: I cannot speak for everybody. I did not leave because I thought: where would I go, and who would need me there? Here there is work to do. Something has to be done and people have to be helped.
Even simply giving somebody food matters. I think we have helped and fed a great many people. Once a person has eaten and is no longer hungry, he can think differently and work differently. We have calmed people down, given them assistance and done something kind for them.
Perhaps there are many people like me who simply want to do something useful rather than leave. They want to help and to remain useful to society and to our city.
Matthew Parish: How does constant war affect the psychological condition of volunteers?
Ludmila Katkova: You become very tired. Of course the nervous system becomes exhausted. Sometimes something happens and your immediate thought is: “That’s it, another strike.” Something is always flying somewhere.
These are people who have lived beneath bombs, explosions and missiles for four years. Naturally that has an effect. But we carry on.
Matthew Parish: How does the foundation work with the local authorities?
Ludmila Katkova: The local authorities know that we exist and know about the assistance we provide. On holidays and occasions such as International Volunteer Day they give us certificates, medals and expressions of thanks for our work.
We have not received significant practical or financial assistance from them. But they know who we are and remember that we are here.
Matthew Parish: What do you think people abroad still fail to understand about everyday life in Kharkiv during the war? Is the reality different from the image of a frontline city seen in foreign media?
Ludmila Katkova: Kharkiv is a frontline city. Perhaps in 2022 and 2023 people in central or western Ukraine did not see or hear what Kharkiv was experiencing. Kharkiv was bombed very heavily. There were explosions every day, sometimes seemingly every minute. Buildings were destroyed and people were killed. Yet throughout all of that we continued working every day.
There is one story that explains this. At Easter we were using this very stove to bake pasky — traditional Easter breads — for soldiers and displaced people. We received a warning that a missile was heading towards the city and that everybody should take shelter.
I told the bakers, and they answered: “We can’t. The dough is rising. It could be ruined. We can’t hide now.”
The Easter bread had to go into the oven because the dough was ready. So they stayed and baked it.
That tells you something about these people. They are extraordinarily resilient. They are devoted to their work and they want to help. They work regardless of what is happening around them. After four years, perhaps we have almost become like machines: something flies overhead, there is an explosion, it missed us — and then we go back to work.
That is simply how it is.
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Interview conducted in Kharkiv by Matthew Parish, Editor-in-Chief of the Lviv Herald, with Ludmila Katkova, head of the Chervona Kalyna Kharkiv Charitable Foundation. The interview was conducted in Russian, translated into English and lightly edited for clarity and readability while preserving the substance of the interviewee’s answers.
