Front-line Bread

Ten years ago, the residents of Donetsk learned firsthand what war is. Among the millions of people who lost their homes at that time was Oleh Tkachenko’s family.

In 2014, Oleh and his family began volunteering—they evacuated people from the front-line areas who could not leave on their own, delivering bread and water to those who remained. Later, to optimize their work and simplify logistics, they opened the bakery in Maryinka.

“At that time, everyone said that we were crazy. It was extremely close to the front line; there was shelling, but we did it anyway,” recalls Kseniia Tkachenko, Oleh’s daughter.

When the Russians occupied Maryinka, Oleh and his family moved the bakery to Pokrovsk.

We meet Oleh and Kseniia at 6:30 a.m. Bread is baked and delivered early so people can get it fresh and fragrant. By the time we arrive, the bakery is already in full swing. The smell of rising dough fills the air, music plays in the background as workers shape loaves by hand, and stacks of fresh bread sit boxed and ready for loading.

“We’re working near the front line all the time. We live with these people, we care for them, we know what they need,” Oleh says. “Even if you have nothing, but there’s water and bread, you can survive.”

The founder of the bakery shares a bit of his craft:
“We make our starter. That’s what makes our bread different—fragrant, aromatic. It can stay fresh all week.”

Oleh gives us a quick tour.

“A lot of our equipment was left behind in Maryinka, which is worth about 1.5 million hryvnias. We couldn’t take it with us. Some things were given to us by friends or volunteers. Some we bought ourselves. These ovens are new—they really speed up the process. Having worked close to the front line before, we knew we’d need to buy a generator. We can’t afford to stop production,” he says.

Every day, about twenty people handle the baking and delivery of the bread. As we walk through the bakery, Oleh notes that most of the workers are originally from Maryinka. They relocated to Pokrovsk together with the Tkachenko family.

“I evacuated all my employees. We didn’t leave anyone behind. These are our people. We also evacuated many who used to come to us for bread. We took people out of Maryinka, out of Vuhledar, out of other towns,” Oleh says.

Dmytro is one of those workers. He’s now helping load loaves into delivery vans and keeping the bakery tidy. He remembers volunteering with Oleh even before the bakery existed, from 2014. At the time, Dmytro worked in the mines.

“I saw the horrors happening around us, and I wanted to help. And we started working together,” Dmytro recalls. For a long time, he resisted leaving Maryinka because his parents refused to evacuate. Though he’s lived in Pokrovsk for two years now, he still doesn’t feel at home.

What Makes a Home

For Oleh, too, the feeling of home isn’t tied to any one place. In 2009, after a car crash claimed the life of his eldest daughter, he and his family moved from Donetsk to Slovyansk. When Slovyansk was occupied in 2014, they briefly relocated to Dnipro.

“I knew Slovyansk would be liberated,” he says. “I believed in it deeply.”

But Oleh didn’t only believe—he acted. He joined the Ukrainian Armed Forces and became a military chaplain. He admits that, earlier in life, he could never have imagined becoming a priest, let alone a chaplain. But after losing his daughter, he turned to faith. When the Russian invasion began in 2014, he realized he could be useful—bringing spiritual care to soldiers on the front.

Since then, the family has moved three more times: from Slovyansk to Vuhledar, from Vuhledar to Maryinka, and finally, in 2022—after Russia’s full-scale invasion—from Maryinka to Pokrovsk.

“It’s hard for the family,” Oleh acknowledges. “Hard on my wife, hard on the kids. But they’ve always supported me.”

A Family Business Born of Displacement

Kseniia, Oleh’s daughter, is at the bakery almost every day. She manages logistics, oversees packing and delivery, and handles paperwork.

“Today’s a quiet day—we’re sending out 2,000 loaves,” she tells us. “Tomorrow it’ll be 5,000, because we’ll be supplying the whole community.”

“We’ve all told Dad—we’re not moving again. We just can’t anymore. Every time it gets harder. Our family’s grown—we’ve got more kids now. I have a daughter. I want her to have some kind of normal life. I want her to know what ‘home’ feels like,” Kseniia says with a smile.

We walk with Kseniia deeper into the bakery yard. Under a tree, on the grass, there’s a pile of toys. It’s an improvised play area for the workers’ children. During our visit, two little girls are playing among the adults. One is Kseniia’s daughter. The other is the daughter of Andrii, the delivery driver who will soon take a load of bread to Selydove.

The second girl’s name is Polina. She’s six. She goes everywhere with her dad. Andrii only recently joined the bakery as a driver. He used to work long-haul, transporting grain in trucks. But he quit—because he couldn’t take his daughter with him, and often had no one to leave her with. Polina’s mother died a few years ago, and their relatives also work full-time. 

We join Andrii and Polina on the delivery route.

Bread for a Bombed Town

In Selydove, we’re met by Hanna, the local coordinator of the humanitarian hub. She beams as she sees the bread.

“It’s always warm and fresh! We give out every last loaf—nothing ever goes to waste! People love it!”

We arrived a little ahead of schedule, so only a few residents are waiting at the hub. But as we unload and count the boxes, more people begin to gather in the square.

Selydove lies just 15 kilometers from the front line. Airstrikes and artillery often hit the town. Still, many residents remain. Most are elderly, but there are also families with small children.

A woman with a baby in her arms takes a loaf and starts to walk away from the hub.

“We’re finally leaving,” she says, distressed. “The shelling last night was unbearable. We can’t take it anymore.”

Later, we learn that during that shelling, a Russian strike destroyed a five-story apartment building in Selydove. This time, miraculously, no one was killed.