I ate the best soup of my life last May at the fire station in Huliaipole, a town 7 kilometers from the war front in Ukraine. It was one solyanka prepared by a firefighter who acted as cook. The solyankamade with broth, pickles and pork, we ate it in the base's meeting room, with the background noise of an electric generator that served the few residents who were left in the place to charge their cell phones.
The firefighters did not remember exactly when the power supply was interrupted, there were too many months of fighting and artillery fire destroying Huliapole. They did remember the day a Russian projectile pierced the hangar of their two trucks, damaging one of the vehicles and shattering the windows. That lunch based on solyanka, chives and bread with sausages tasted heavenly, not only because the soup was excellent, especially because eating in a war zone is an essential exercise of brotherhood to sustain the morale of the group.
Ukrainian soldiers suffer multiple adversities: the danger of death, being wounded, inclement weather and mental disorders. But they don't lack food. The ranch of the day appears punctually in vans along the entire front. The soldiers collect the rations in pots or pots. Not only do they receive these rations, tons of industrial food (sliced bread, bottles of water, chocolates or preserves) reach each brigade from volunteer organizations. But what the troops are most grateful for is the homemade food and the food that families from the villages where they are stationed give them as gifts or sell them.
Ukraine is one of the five largest agricultural exporting countries. Its land, especially in the east, is known for being fertile like few others in the world. In any corner, in a plot next to a train track, in a flower bed in a town or in the garden of any house, Ukrainians plant and the land returns what they have planted in abundance. Canned vegetables and fruits are stored in the pantries of the bases, in the kitchens of the houses that the soldiers occupy temporarily, in the bunkers where they live or in improvised refrigerators underground: they dig a hole, bury the casing of an artillery shell already used and inside they put the food, which they will isolate with some plastic.
Chives, pickles, garlic and tomatoes cannot be missing from a Ukrainian table, nor from those of the military. They are pickles and fresh vegetables accompanying stews and meat. Eggs from chickens and other birds such as geese, which predominate in the pens at the front, are also common in the diet. And there is no lack of salo, pork loin fat cured for a few weeks and ideally served in thin, almost frozen strips. He salo It is an obligatory accompaniment in Ukrainian vodka drinking rituals, in which it is toasted to family, women and colleagues who have died. It is especially in this last toast that we cry or there is a silence that breaks the soul because anyone understands that someone died fighting side by side.
Alcohol is prohibited in the Ukrainian Armed Forces, but there is always a bottle hidden away to celebrate a special occasion. If the troops are grateful for anything, it is, in addition to cartons of tobacco, a couple of bottles of homemade liquor. Most rural households in Ukraine distill their own liquors from what they grow themselves, plums, grapes, nuts or potatoes. Everything is useful to make a brandy, a wine or a vodka that would serve as fuel to start a tractor.
Drones and macerated tomatoes
There was a September night on the Kupiansk war front that began with artillery fire and ended with a feast of homemade pasta stuffed with cheese and potatoes. The SUV of Vladislav, commander of a grad missile battery of the Ukrainian 14th Separate Mechanized Brigade, was speeding down a forest road to return to his base, a house in a village occupied by the army. The rush was not because it was dinner time, it was because we had to quickly get out of the position from where Vladislav's unit had fired its rockets at the Russian troops. At any time, the enemy could return fire by firing into that area.
Vladislav's SUV parked camouflaged under some trees. It was getting out of the vehicle and hearing the characteristic sound of a drone's propellers: it was a Russian reconnaissance device approaching. Small arms fire began to break the sunset, bullets rising into the sky from the forest. Vladislav gave the order to run the 100 meters that separated us from the house. Upon entering, we left behind the rain and the threat of the drone. The windows were covered with paper, so that the drones could not distinguish if anyone lived in the house. A young non-commissioned officer gave me a warm welcome, showing me two trays of varenikis prepared by a local neighbor. The varenikis They are traditional Ukrainian fresh dough dumplings that are boiled and can be eaten with onion and sour cream.
Vladislav's soldiers also served some macerated tomatoes like I have never eaten before, a gift from another neighbor. The man soaked the tomatoes from his garden for five days, in a bucket, with water, salt, sugar, onion, garlic, pepper, bay, cherry and cranberry leaves. His magic touch was to add an aspirin or two. The result was a unique combination of flavors in which an acidic touch predominated.
Military families can also send food. In October I had lunch at the house where a battalion commander of the 1st Armored Brigade lived. It was a humble farm on the edge of a forest on the Zaporizhia front. Tank crews lived in shelters dug underground, next to their tanks. The commander, one of the most decorated officers in Ukraine, ordered his cook and helper for everything to prepare us a sumptuous dinner. I couldn't miss a soup borscht (beet and sour cream), The quintessential Ukrainian dish—which that day was also part of his men's ranch—buckwheat with bacon, sausages, pickles made by the commander's mother, and some pastries also baked by the mother.
The house was a mess, with wooden planks on the floor instead of tiles. In a room next to the meeting room where we had dinner, the command post was installed, with six screens that reported live on the enemy's movement by land and air. When they saw that he was snooping through the screens while he pretended to be distracted by savoring a pastry from the commander's mother, they quickly closed the curtain that isolated the room—there were no doors.
Food is not in short supply on the front lines either. Soldiers' shifts at the most advanced posts can be from one to four days. In the trenches and bunkers they store groceries, preserves and also food that can be cooked quickly with a frying pan and a camping gas. In July 2022, at an advanced post of a company of the 17th Armored Brigade in the offensive towards Nova Kajovka (southern front), the gunner of a T-72 tank asked his superior if they had brought him “a journalist or a “Spanish beggar.” After twelve hours without stopping for a moment, at dinner time we arrived at a forest where six armored vehicles were awaiting orders 5 kilometers from the Russians to carry out artillery actions. On the table that they had improvised with four pieces of wood, they had food served, pickles and tomatoes, sausages, bread, salted fish and kvass homemade also gifted by families in the province. He kvass It is a sweet and refreshing drink popular throughout the Slavic world, made from honey, rye or malt. I ate more that afternoon than the three T-72 crew members combined.
In the most exposed positions on the front, those within 500 meters of the enemy, or in operations that require hours of combat, food can be military rations that both armies pack for their soldiers or that have been donated by armies of the NATO. The content is very similar in both armies, canned or packaged food to eat instantly. Some Ukrainian experts consulted by EL PAÍS – that is, soldiers on the front – assure that the quality of their rations is much better than the Russian one, except for one product, tea. On my visits to the front I have been collecting Russian army tea bags, sealed with their distinctive green star, which I have found among the rubble of villages that had been occupied. I made a promise to myself: I will drink this tea when the war is over.
The traditional Ukrainian recipe book is so rich that it helps to cope with the miseries of military life. But there is something that soldiers like more, especially the younger ones, and that is the fast food of American culture. The hot dog that they prepare at gas stations are a symbol of Ukraine as is the borscht, with the sausage inside a long bun, with the sauces overflowing through the hole. In the rear there are few open businesses, but you will always find a gas station open, because they provide the necessary fuel for the thousands of vehicles in which the soldiers travel. They are embassies of civilization, of the life that they have left behind for almost two years.
Devotion to McDonald's
But if there's one thing these younger Ukrainian soldiers dream about, it's a McDonald's hamburger. The fast food chain is a myth in Ukraine as it has been in Russia, an icon of the hopes that capitalism promised to the post-Soviet world, an emblem in countries that were opening up to the world. McDonald's has closed in Russia as a boycott action against the invasion, but in Ukraine they have closed in the eastern regions due to the threat of bombs. The closest establishments to the eastern front are in the city of Dnipro, and it is there where many soldiers make pilgrimages, from Kharkiv or Zaporizhzhia, if they have a few days off. They drive up to three hours to eat at McDonald's.
I asked Emil Prykhodko, a 27-year-old friend from Zaporizhzhia who occasionally escapes to Dinpro to eat a McDonald's menu, about Ukraine's devotion to this fast food: “It's very good quality, better than in other European countries, such as Germany or France. It's rubbish there. McDonald's in Ukraine has nothing to do with it.” In October, I finally went to a McDonald's in kyiv. I ordered portions of six different products and they seemed the same “crap” as anywhere else. I understood that a dish is often appreciated not only for its quality but also for the emotional component that accompanies it. As the solyanka I so enjoyed that afternoon with the Huliaipole firefighters.
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