Sunrise in Saltivka: The Kharkiv Canteen That Refuses to Close
By Matthew Parish
Tuesday 29 September 2026
There are parts of Kharkiv where the war is measured not primarily in maps, communiqués or diplomatic statements, but in meals. In Saltivka, the vast residential district in the north-east of the city that suffered extraordinary destruction during the first months of Russia’s full-scale invasion, one of the most elementary questions of war remains stubbornly present: who will feed the people who have nowhere else to go?
The Sunrise Charity Canteen, or Схід Сонця, answers that question five days a week. It is run by Natalia Mykolaivna Grama, usually known simply as Natasha, a Kharkiv woman whose pre-war career was spent in cafés, restaurants and food retail. Today she and a predominantly female group of volunteers prepare approximately 250 to 300 free hot meals a day. There are days when they could distribute substantially more, if only they had the money to cook them.
Sunrise is operated in connection with the registered Ukrainian charity Charitable Foundation “Ukrainian Guardians” (Благодійний фонд «Українські Берегині»). Ukrainian
corporate records identify Grama as its director and record the charity as having been established in April 2023. Its own website describes its mission as providing free meals to people in Kharkiv, particularly elderly people and children, with the assistance of Ukrainian volunteers and international donors.
Yet the story of Sunrise is considerably more complicated than that description suggests. It begins on the first day of the full-scale invasion, passes through the underground stations in which thousands of Kharkiv residents sheltered from Russian bombardment and includes a remarkable partnership — and subsequently an acrimonious falling-out — with one of Kharkiv’s best-known foreign volunteers, the Japanese citizen Fuminori Tsuchiko.
I met Natasha in Kharkiv to hear her account. The interview was conducted in Russian, the language in which she was most comfortable describing these events, and has been translated into English and lightly edited for clarity and length. Where the interview addresses her dispute with Tsuchiko, the allegations are presented as Grama’s account, not as independently established findings of the Lviv Herald. The existence of the dispute itself, and competing allegations between the two sides, were reported by Ukrainian media in 2024.
From restaurants to war
Matthew Parish: Natasha, tell me a little about yourself. What did you do before the full-scale invasion and how did your life change after 24 February 2022?
Natalia Grama: I worked in catering. I worked in cafés and restaurants as a cook and, from time to time, as a shop assistant. Immediately before the war I was working in a shop selling shashlik. So I had always been closely connected with catering and feeding people.
From the very first day of the war I went out to help people. I became a volunteer, although at the time I didn’t even understand that this was what I was becoming. I have been helping people in different ways ever since.
At the beginning of the war I was working in a café where I fed people. It was hit by an enemy missile and completely destroyed. I then became the senior volunteer in the Metro station underneath where my café had been. I went underground and from then on we helped people inside the Metro.
MP: Why did you decide to remain in Kharkiv rather than leave?
NG: I had already started helping people from the first day. I couldn’t imagine abandoning what I was doing. My children were grown up. I didn’t want to leave.
I understood that I was here and that we had to do something to support people. Where was I supposed to go? There were people helping me as well, and there were people we had to feed and help to survive those very difficult times.
“A hungry person thinks about nothing else”
MP: Why did hot food become the principal focus of your work?
NG: From the first day I was already feeding people. I believe the first thing a human being needs is food. A hungry person doesn’t think about anything else. They want to eat.
I had therefore always wanted to have a charitable canteen where people could come and have a proper, tasty meal.
That philosophy remains strikingly simple. Humanitarian work can acquire a formidable bureaucracy, particularly when conducted through international organisations. Natasha’s conception of it begins somewhere more elementary. If somebody is hungry, feed them first. Discuss everything else afterwards.
MP: Who works with you at Sunrise today?
NG: My girls, my volunteers. Most of them are older women. Most receive no salary, so I cannot really expect young people to do this work.
Then there is financial support. Without that, none of this is possible. We have large electricity bills and rent to pay. I also have agreements with various charitable foundations that help us with food products. We have to have something from which to make the lunches.
Everyone helps. I am grateful to all of them. Without them I couldn’t do anything.
Three hundred lunches in an hour
The scale is impressive for what remains a grassroots operation. Natasha says Sunrise is presently serving approximately 250 to 300 meals on each of its five operating days. Demand, she says, is increasing rather than diminishing.
MP: Have the needs of Saltivka changed since 2022? Are things becoming easier?
NG: I wouldn’t say they have decreased. The opposite: they have increased.
It isn’t only people from Saltivka. Many internally displaced people are coming from the Kharkiv region into the city. They arrive with nothing. They need clothes, hygiene products and food. People need to eat and somehow survive.
At the same time, there are fewer organisations providing assistance and more people who need it. So the need for help grows every day.
This is one of the less conspicuous transformations of the war in eastern Ukraine. The front has moved since the Battle of Kharkiv in 2022, but the humanitarian burden has not disappeared with it. People displaced from communities nearer the contemporary front move into Kharkiv and join a population already battered by years of missiles, drones and economic disruption.
MP: What does an ordinary day at Sunrise look like?
NG: It begins the day before. The women prepare the vegetables and we decide what the next day’s menu will be. We don’t shop every day; we buy things when we need them.
My mother arrives here at seven in the morning. The other women begin arriving at eight and cooking starts. I arrive a little later. I can help with the cooking but I have many other responsibilities.
At twelve o’clock the canteen opens. People queue outside. We register them and record how many portions they take because we need that for our reporting. We can distribute 250 to 300 portions in about an hour.
We also feed children. There is a day camp with about thirty children and they asked us to provide their food. I make a separate menu for them because children want something a little tastier. Some are orphans and some are the children of our fallen heroes. So we feed them and help them.
Children under the drones
Sunrise has also distributed clothing, hygiene products and nappies, although Natasha says these are becoming increasingly difficult to obtain. Some assistance goes to people with disabilities and families caring for disabled children.
The work with children is the part of the project about which she becomes particularly animated. Before the deterioration in the security situation, Saturdays at Sunrise might involve candyfloss, presents, sweets and children’s activities. The return of long-range Russian drones to the skies over Kharkiv has made that more difficult.
MP: Why is giving children something resembling an ordinary childhood so important to you?
NG: For me that is a separate issue altogether. Children should experience a happy childhood, even in wartime.
I’ve stopped organising so many events recently because the drones can reach us now. Before, children came here every Saturday. We had candyfloss, little presents and sweets. They still come on Saturdays and I always try to give them something.
But I am frightened of gathering large numbers of children together now. Drones reach us. Drones explode nearby. I’m very afraid of having many children in one place.
But I always wait for them. They are my inspiration. They make me want to continue.
More than lunch
A charitable canteen inevitably becomes something other than a place to eat. Hunger and loneliness have an uncomfortable tendency to accompany one another, particularly amongst elderly people living through a prolonged war.
MP: Has Sunrise become a social centre as well as a canteen?
NG: It always was. Elderly people always need attention. They come to me for hygiene products and then tell me how difficult their lives are and how much they want to talk about everything.
Here we are very busy — it is like a conveyor belt when we are serving food. But if they manage to catch me, they will talk and talk. I’m extremely busy, but I give them some attention.
After all, who doesn’t appreciate a kind word? Who doesn’t want to share their worries and see a pleasant expression and some understanding in response?
The story of FuMi Caffe
The most difficult chapter of Natasha’s story concerns Fuminori Tsuchiko, the Japanese volunteer who became something of a celebrity in wartime Kharkiv. The two worked together and the resulting FuMi Caffe became internationally known for providing free meals.
Their relationship subsequently collapsed amid mutual accusations. Contemporary Ukrainian reporting confirms that the dispute became public in June 2024, that the “Fumi” name was removed from the café and that the foundation was renamed Ukrainian Guardians. What follows is Natasha’s account of that dispute. Tsuchiko’s competing account should be regarded separately, and the financial allegations below have not been independently established by the Lviv Herald.
MP: How did you first meet Fuminori?
NG: We met in June 2022. I was already volunteering in the Metro. He came to us offering to help. We discussed everything and he stayed, helping me support people. We bought breakfasts and distributed them, together with hygiene products and other things.
Before New Year we left the café and Fuminori lived at my home for another two months. We distributed bread and milk — about a thousand portions once a week.
My ambition had always been to open a charitable canteen. We discussed it and a few days later he offered to support me financially. The project was my idea. I wanted to do it and he supported me, saying that Japanese people would support us.
About 90 per cent of the support that allowed us to open came from Japanese people. We eventually had twelve members of staff and were distributing a thousand hot meals every day.
MP: What went wrong?
NG: It worked beautifully while we were receiving food products from other organisations. Then Fuminori stopped doing what he had promised. He stopped financing the establishment.
We had a major conflict. I had always supported him because I thought this was somebody with whom I could feed millions of people, not merely a thousand.
Natasha alleges that donations raised using the project’s profile remained under Tsuchiko’s control while she struggled to meet the café’s operating costs. She says that when free supplies of meat ceased, feeding a thousand people required enormous expenditure, alongside salaries, taxation, rent and electricity.
She also says she named the original café and foundation after Fuminori as an expression of gratitude to the Japanese people who had helped make the project possible.
NG: I didn’t want to make money from it. I didn’t want to turn it into a business or something dirty. My husband was serving in the military then. My son serves now. I wanted to help.
But when financing became more difficult, I realised I was alone.
Natasha says the relationship finally became untenable after disputes over donations, accounting and the ownership and management of the café. She alleges that Tsuchiko asked her to close the operation, something she refused to contemplate.
NG: I didn’t create this project for that. If we no longer had the same resources, then yes, we could make it smaller. But we should not close for even one day because people genuinely need this help.
I had trusted him very much. For two years I thought he was almost family, somebody who had genuinely come here to help. Afterwards I was simply disappointed.
Starting again
The end of that partnership nearly destroyed Natasha’s project.
MP: How difficult was it to establish Sunrise separately?
NG: It was incredibly difficult. Nobody knew me because I had never been the person in front of the camera. Fuminori did all that. Our arrangement had been that I wouldn’t make posts or appear before the cameras: he would do that and I would manage the internal work.
So nobody knew me.
When we quarrelled, I was alone. People called me a fraud. But I’m not a fraud. I want to help people. My purpose isn’t to steal money. I want people to come to me and I want to be able to feed them a proper hot meal.
For six months it was unbelievably difficult. Very few people supported me. I stopped being able to pay salaries. We went from a thousand portions to a hundred because I simply didn’t have the food or resources.
But we still fed those hundred people.
The canteen moved to a five-day week. Gradually a new collection of volunteers formed around it, including older women willing to work without salaries. From the low point of about 100 meals a day, Natasha says Sunrise has now climbed back towards 300.
“We are tired,” she tells me. “It is difficult. But we continue along our path. I believe that to close now would be to betray the people who genuinely need us.”
Keeping the ovens on
The official Sunrise website says the project depends upon donors in Ukraine and abroad. Natasha describes the reality in more personal terms: vegetables may arrive from local traders, residents bring surplus grains and food products are supplied through charitable partners. International friends help with bills.
But electricity is mercilessly indifferent to good intentions.
MP: What does Sunrise need most now?
NG: I won’t hide it: money. Funding. Funding is what keeps me going. I cannot take another step without it.
Why am I cooking only 300 portions now? My oven can take about 300 portions of fried food. If I turn it on again, my electricity costs increase. I already struggle to pay what we have.
If I had reliable funding, I could employ staff. I could feed more people and buy the additional products we need. I am ready to work, but right now I don’t have that sense of financial security.
I have wonderful women here, but a kitchen also needs professionals. We need at least two cooks if the numbers are going to increase.
People come to me now when the food is already gone and I have to turn them away. I simply cannot manage any more.
There is something brutally concrete about this answer. The constraint on humanitarian ambition in Saltivka is sometimes no more sophisticated than whether an electric oven can economically be switched on for a second batch.
Natasha says donors who support Sunrise directly receive photographs, receipts and accounts showing how their contributions were spent. The foundation itself is a registered Ukrainian charitable organisation under Natalia Grama’s directorship, with registration number 45134052.
She also recognises an increasingly serious problem for Ukrainian charities: exhaustion abroad.
MP: Do you feel that the outside world is becoming tired of Ukraine?
NG: Of course I do. I’m in Ukraine and I’m tired too.
But I gave myself my word that I would endure for as long as I could, and I’m still holding on.
We should be honest. Even in Ukraine, when the war began in the Donbas years ago, those of us elsewhere in the country didn’t really understand the suffering people near the front were experiencing. We sympathised and knew it was happening in our country, but until the full-scale war we hadn’t experienced it ourselves.
Of course other countries become tired. The war has gone on for a very long time. But there are still people standing with us, people prepared to continue helping us, and we are extraordinarily grateful to them.
Without them we cannot survive.
The people behind the statistics
Numbers such as “300 meals” make humanitarian work comprehensible to donors. They can also conceal what the numbers mean.
MP: Of the thousands of people you have encountered, is there one story you particularly remember?
NG: There are hundreds.
Right now I’m thinking of a woman raising orphaned children. There are eight small children, all under about ten or twelve. Sometimes their payments don’t arrive. She comes to me and says, “Natasha, please, can you at least give me a bottle of sunflower oil?” So I help them.
There are many people who say, “We’ve come from Vovchansk. We’ve arrived with nothing. We don’t even have food and we have children.”
Once, in winter, a woman arrived practically barefoot. It was bitterly cold. She was wearing slippers and just a light top. I dressed her here and gave her shoes. She left with tears in her eyes.
There are so many stories. I could tell them forever.
Perhaps this is the most important distinction between Sunrise and the industrial machinery of international humanitarian relief. For Natasha, beneficiaries have faces. They interrupt interviews because somebody needs men’s clothing for wounded soldiers in hospital. They need nappies. They need a bottle of sunflower oil. They need somebody to listen to them for five minutes. And at noon they form a queue.
Five years after peace
MP: What happens to Sunrise when the war eventually ends?
NG: Even if a wonderful miracle happens and the war ends, life in Ukraine will remain extremely difficult for many years.
Everything will not suddenly become good in a single moment. Other countries will stop helping us at the levels they do now, but the people will remain here — people without apartments, without jobs and with all their problems.
They will need this assistance for at least another five years.
I would like this café to continue, and to do much more, even after the war. We will have to rebuild and that will take a very long time. Somebody who has lost their home cannot simply buy another one. Renting is very expensive.
That person will still need food for a long time.
That answer captures something easily forgotten when wars are discussed in terms of eventual ceasefires and peace agreements. Peace does not reconstruct an apartment block. It does not replenish a pensioner’s savings, return a dead parent to a child or provide a displaced family from Vovchansk with a new home.
Nor does it make lunch.
For the moment, therefore, the women of Sunrise arrive in the morning. Natasha’s mother comes at seven. The other volunteers follow at eight. Vegetables prepared the previous evening are turned into lunch. At midday the doors open and, over approximately the next hour, hundreds of portions disappear.
Then they prepare to do it again.
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Supporting Sunrise Charity Canteen
Sunrise operates through Charitable Foundation “Ukrainian Guardians” (БО БФ «Українські Берегині»), registration/EDRPOU number 45134052. Its official website provides information about the project and donation facilities.
The following donation details are also publicly listed for Sunrise. Because banking details can change, prospective donors should verify them with Sunrise or its official website before making a substantial transfer.
Ukrainian bank transfer:
Beneficiary: БО БФ «УКРАЇНСЬКІ БЕРЕГИНІ» / Sunrise Charity Canteen
IBAN: UA643052990000026005015917261
EDRPOU / beneficiary code: 45134052
Bank: АТ КБ «ПриватБанк», Kharkiv
PayPal: Guardiansuafund@gmail.com
Sunrise also maintains the social-media account @sunrise_2024, where its work and assistance to Kharkiv residents are documented. A publicly available support page also identifies Natalia’s Facebook presence as natali.grama.2025.
For those wondering what to send, Natasha’s answer during our interview was unambiguous. Clothes and equipment can be useful, food is always welcome, and a large commercial food processor would make life easier for the women preparing hundreds of meals by hand. But the principal need is reliable financial support: money for electricity, rent, ingredients and professional kitchen staff.
The significance of a donation to Sunrise can therefore be expressed in unusually straightforward terms. It helps keep the ovens on.
