For most people, a bowl of soup is unremarkable. But for evacuees like Olha, who spent the last four-and-a-half years trapped in a war zone, the World Food Programme (WFP) meals are a feast.

“Our neighbours had eaten all the pigeons in the area, every last one,” the 50-year-old recalls. “I simply couldn’t understand how there could be hunger in the 21st century.”

Olha is one of hundreds of people evacuated from Oleshky in late October under a brief ceasefire who are now receiving medical check-ups and treatment in Kyiv hospitals. WFP and its Ukrainian partner, Iskra Dobra, were the first humanitarian responders to provide hot meals the moment they arrived.

“This is the first proper meal they have had in years,” said Richard Ragan, WFP Country Director in Ukraine.

Food in short supply

When the war erupted in 2022, Oleshky was occupied – sitting on the frontline – and eventually cut off from humanitarian assistance. Olha and her husband, Serhii, were searched, interrogated and threatened. “By noon at the latest, everyone was indoors,” Serhii says.

Food grew scarce and prices soared, and a kilo of flour could cost as much as $12, evacuees say. In May, food deliveries ended altogether.

With no heating in their shell-damaged home, the family slept in three layers of clothes. Olha planted cucumbers, tomatoes and zucchini, rushing outside during brief lulls between attacks to tend them.

“It was terribly frightening. But what could we do? We had to eat,” she says.

Further down the corridor, 78-year-old Valentyna describes how she and her elderly neighbours made soup from wild plants. “There was no bread, no flour, nothing at all,” she says.

A full plate at last

“Until we reached the border, we were afraid anything could still happen,” Olha recalls. Then, suddenly, they were through. Along the road to Kyiv, people stood holding signs and Ukrainian flags to welcome them.

“We saw our people,” she says. “There was something so wonderful about their energy. A sense of peace.”

For Valentyna, the meals have been a revelation. “Here, you can eat until you’re full! I hadn’t seen so much food in years,” she says. “The borscht is absolutely delicious.”

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, WFP has provided the equivalent of 4.1 billion meals to Ukraine’s most vulnerable people. Every month, it reaches 357,000 people in frontline communities with emergency food and cash assistance, and some 200,000 students receive its daily school meals.

For the evacuees, the future remains uncertain, with homes they cannot return to and years of fear that will not simply disappear. But there is also the relief of being safe and, in a hospital room in Kyiv, having a hot meal waiting.