Dinner for Homeless: Volunteers provide hundreds with traditional Ukrainian …
Christmas dinner (UNIAN Photo)
Candlelit festive dinner includes kutya, which is made from wheat, honey, and chopped nuts
Dozens of homeless and low income families have gathered at a local restaurant in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv to receive a warm Christmas dinner. The bitter cold snap during the holiday season in Ukraine has hit the homeless population particularly hard this year.
Inside the restaurant people sit down to a candlelit festive meal. The menu includes the main Ukrainian Christmas dinner dish- the kutya, which is made from wheat, honey, ground poppy seeds, and chopped nuts.
Read also Volunteers in Ukraine organise New Year celebration for displaced children
One Kyiv resident happily confirms, “It’s real kutya, it has poppy seeds, and honey!”
One of the organizers tells us that they prepared to serve a holiday dinner to hundreds of people.
Yevhen Sabateev, volunteer: “Overall in Kyiv we invited over 250 people. These are the folks we see almost every week and give them food and tea.”
At this meal organizers tried to provide an assortment of dishes, but many said the simple ones were the best.
Anatol, Kyiv resident: “I like mashed potatoes best. We’re Ukrainian so we’re used to potatoes, we can’t live without them.”
Before the start of the conflict in eastern Ukraine with Russian-backed militants, it was widely reported that there were over 12,000 homeless people in Kyiv.
Read also Ukrainian troops mark winter holidays on the frontline of conflict against militants
But the fighting, which began in 2014, has crippled Ukraine’s economy, threatening to push that number higher.
According to World Bank figures Ukraine’s GDP fell by 12% in 2015. Credit Suisse research institute report meanwhile says that Ukraine was ranked as one of the poorest countries in Europe last year.
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