07.09.2026 11:00 "Agro Perspectiva" (Kyiv) — There was a time when Ukrainians cooked in traditional ovens, over open fires, in large iron pots, and even directly in hot ashes.

SPECIAL EDITION. Cooking Underground: What Ukrainians Eat in Shelters During Air Raids

tember 2026, Ukraine has another kind of kitchen. It is not really a kitchen at all.

It is found on metro platforms, in underground parking garages, basements, school shelters, Points of Invincibility and other places where people take cover during air raids.

There may be no stove.

No kitchen table.

Sometimes there is not even a proper place to sit.

But people still eat.

An air raid alert can last for an hour. It can also continue for several hours or through most of the night.

And when that happens, food becomes more than a way to satisfy hunger.

It becomes a way to get through the waiting.

September 2026: shelters become part of everyday life again

Late August and early September 2026 brought another period of intense air raids to Kyiv. According to French newspaper Le Monde, more than 60 air raid alerts were recorded in the capital between August 27 and September 1, lasting more than 52 hours in total. The newspaper described how the continuing attacks are increasingly disrupting the normal rhythm of life in the city.

Reuters has also reported on successive waves of attacks that disrupted public transport and forced Kyiv residents to spend more time in metro stations and shelters.

For the metro, this means a very different kind of daily routine.

During air raids, underground stations become shelters, and tens of thousands of people can gather there at the same time.

On the night of July 2, around 52,500 people were sheltering at Kyiv metro stations, including almost 4,500 children.

On August 20, the city authorities reported that almost 40,000 people had taken shelter in metro stations during that night. Kyiv has 46 underground metro stations that can be used as shelters during air raids.

This is not a handful of people carrying emergency backpacks and a bottle of water.

It is a temporary underground city.

And every city needs food.

What people take with them

The most practical shelter food is food that can be eaten without a kitchen.

Sandwiches, open-faced sandwiches, biscuits, snack bars, nuts, fruit and dried fruit are among the simplest options.

For children, parents tend to choose familiar foods that can be eaten without heating or complicated preparation.

For adults, the ideal food is something that can be taken out of a container and eaten while sitting on a bench, on the floor or even standing.

And there is almost always water.

It is very simple food.

But that is precisely its advantage.

In a shelter, food is suddenly judged not by the complexity of the recipe, but by how few problems it creates.

No cooking.

No heating.

No complicated dishes.

No need to find a fork.

No soup spilling onto your clothes.

A sandwich is almost the perfect technology for this environment.

The thermos becomes the main kitchen appliance

If the sandwich is the cold kitchen of the shelter, the thermos is its hot version.

Tea, coffee, hot water and sometimes ready-made meals can all be brought from home without electricity or a stove.

During long periods of air raids, the thermos has gradually become more than a camping accessory. It has become part of everyday urban life.

Hot food and a hot drink have another important quality: they restore a sense of normality.

A person may be sitting on a cold metro platform, listening to the air raid siren and waiting for the all-clear. But a cup of warm tea can still create a small moment that feels like an ordinary morning.

Perhaps that is why tea appears so often in Ukraine’s emergency and volunteer support systems.

A Point of Invincibility as a small public canteen

Ukraine’s Points of Invincibility have long been more than places where people can charge their phones.

They provide basic conditions for people who may need to stay somewhere for an extended period.

Depending on the location, these points can offer drinking water, hot water, tea, coffee, snacks, heating, electricity and places to rest.

Some locations also provide hot meals.

In Kyiv, for example, some Points of Invincibility have operated in restaurants and other public venues where people could get hot borscht and tea, warm up, charge their devices and use Wi-Fi.

This creates a new kind of urban food infrastructure.

It is not a restaurant.

It is not a canteen.

It is not a cafe.

It is a place where the main question is no longer, «What’s on the menu today?»

The question is:

What can we give people to eat while they wait?

A children’s menu for the shelter

When thousands of people gather underground, many of them are children.

That makes food a separate issue.

It is difficult to explain to a child that dinner will come in three hours because missiles are flying somewhere above the city.

So parents tend to bring simple foods that can be eaten without preparation: water, biscuits, fruit, snack bars, nuts, dried fruit and sandwiches.

Food for a child in a shelter needs to be more than nutritious.

It needs to be familiar.

A favorite biscuit or an apple can provide a small sense of home in an unfamiliar underground space.

That is why children’s food during an air raid is not only about calories.

It is also about comfort.

When dinner lasts all night

The real challenge begins when an air raid alert stops being a short interruption.

A person enters a shelter expecting to stay for an hour. Then two hours pass. Then it becomes clear that it is still too early to go home.

The entire pattern of eating changes.

One snack bar is no longer enough.

People need water, proper food, something hot and sometimes more than one meal.

In this sense, prolonged attacks create a completely new urban challenge:

How do you feed large numbers of people in places that were never designed to serve food?

A metro station, underground parking garage or school shelter does not have a restaurant kitchen.

But people may spend a significant part of the night there.

Food therefore has to come from somewhere else: thermoses, food containers, emergency points, shops, cafes, volunteer groups and charitable kitchens.

Restaurants become part of the system

The war has changed the role of some food businesses.

A cafe or restaurant can become more than a place where people go to eat.

It can also become a Point of Invincibility, a place to warm up, charge a phone, get Wi-Fi or receive a hot meal.

This becomes especially important during major attacks and power outages.

In Kyiv, restaurants have been used as Points of Invincibility where people could receive hot borscht and tea, stay warm, connect to Wi-Fi and charge their devices.

In such circumstances, a food business begins to perform part of the role normally associated with public infrastructure.

And then there are volunteer kitchens

This is a story of its own.

Since the beginning of the full-scale war, Ukraine has developed a large network of charitable and volunteer food initiatives.

Volunteers prepare hot meals for people affected by Russian attacks, residents of damaged neighborhoods, hospitals, evacuated families and other people who need immediate assistance.

International organizations have documented the work of groups such as World Central Kitchen and Ukrainian volunteers who prepare and distribute hot meals to communities affected by Russian attacks.

This is no longer simply about food in shelters.

It is a separate food system.

And it deserves its own story: how Ukraine learned to feed people after attacks destroy the ordinary infrastructure around them.

Food that works in the dark

In an ordinary kitchen, few people think about whether a meal can be eaten without electricity or light.

In a shelter, it can become a practical question.

The most useful foods are those that:

do not require heating;
can be stored safely for some time;
do not require complicated dishes or utensils;
do not create a lot of waste;
can easily be shared;
can be eaten while sitting or standing;
can be carried safely in a bag.

That is why, in a shelter, the winner is not necessarily the tastiest or most fashionable food.

It is the food that works.

The Ukrainian shelter sandwich of 2026

If we had to choose a symbolic dish of the Ukrainian shelter in 2026, it probably would not be an elaborate recipe.

It would probably be a sandwich.

Bread.

Cheese.

Meat or sausage.

Vegetables.

Perhaps some butter.

An apple, biscuit or snack bar on the side.

And a thermos of tea.

It sounds ordinary.

And that is precisely the point.

People in shelters try to preserve at least a small part of ordinary life.

To eat something familiar.

To give a child some tea.

To share a sandwich.

To offer a biscuit to a stranger.

These are small gestures, but they create a sense of community in a place where everyone has arrived for the same reason.

The metro as the largest dining room nobody planned

There is a certain paradox here.

Kyiv’s metro was built to transport people.

During the war, it also became a shelter.

And when tens of thousands of people spend hours underground, the metro becomes a temporary living space.

People sleep.

They work.

They read.

They feed their children.

They drink tea.

They wait.

Summer 2026

Agro Perspectiva

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