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This holiday season, World Central Kitchen (WCK) is introducing Kutia kits in Ukraine — seasonal food kits inspired by one of the most significant Christmas traditions in the country.

Kutia, a traditional dish made from wheat, is prepared on Christmas Eve and holds deep cultural significance for Ukrainians. For families living under conditions of war, displacement, and loss, the ability to prepare this familiar holiday dish helps them maintain a sense of continuity, dignity, and unity during difficult times.

Each Kutia kit contains the non-perishable ingredients needed to prepare the dish at home, including wheat, poppy seeds, dried fruits, walnuts, and honey, as well as a simple recipe.

As part of the pilot project, WCK will distribute 20,000 Kutia kits to families in frontline and near-frontline communities across eight Ukrainian regions: Donetsk, Kharkiv, Kherson, Dnipropetrovsk, Sumy, Zaporizhzhia, Mykolaiv, and Chernihiv oblasts.

Media are invited to cover the distribution of Kutia kits in the Kharkiv, Kherson, Dnipropetrovsk, Sumy, Zaporizhzhia, and Mykolaiv regions, pending security assessments. Interviews with the leadership of the World Central Kitchen mission in Ukraine are available in person (in Lviv or Kyiv) or online. WCK can also provide photo and video b-roll from distribution sites upon request.

Background: World Central Kitchen began providing food aid in Ukraine immediately after the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022. Since then, the organization has continuously adapted its work, combining emergency food provision with innovative long-term food access projects. To date, WCK has provided over 292 million meals across the country.

• culture
• food
• volunteers

Tetiana Romaniuk experienced the beginning of the full-scale invasion alongside the Rapid Response Teams of the Red Cross Society in Ukraine. Her volunteer skills proved invaluable when evacuating people with limited mobility from parts of the Kyiv oblast and from frontline areas in the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts.

In August 2022, Tetiana joined the volunteer Hospitallers Medical Battalion. She went to the front lines with five years of experience working in emergency situations. For over three years now, Tetiana has been working under extreme conditions, often at great risk to her own life.

Tetiana recalls one particular evacuation: her crew was rescuing the same soldier for the second time. The Hospitallers vehicle came under fire but only the car was damaged.

During breaks between evacuation missions, Tetiana embroidered traditional towels to distract herself from her experiences. It is also a way to help preserve Ukrainian culture, which is being destroyed by russian forces.

Journalists can speak with Tetiana Romaniuk online or offline by prior arrangement.

• culture
• doctors
• volunteers
• women

Roberto Faletti, an Italian national, has come to Ukraine for the seventieth time since the start of the full-scale invasion. He first crossed the Ukrainian border on February 26, 2022, and has been volunteering and supporting Ukrainians ever since.

Together with his team, he founded the charitable organization La Memoria Viva, which delivers humanitarian aid to internally displaced persons, people from frontline areas, orphans, and the children of fallen Ukrainian soldiers. During his 70th mission, Roberto has visited the Donetsk, Kharkiv, Odesa, and Kherson oblasts.

Journalists can speak with Roberto Faletti online or offline by prior arrangement.

• volunteers

Three teams of volunteer doctors with FRIDA Ukraine are scheduled to deploy on December 13-14 to deliver medical care to civilians living near the front lines. The groups will travel to communities in the Sumy, Kherson, and Chernihiv regions.

Journalists, by prior arrangement, will be able to document the work of the medical teams and speak with both patients and staff during the missions.

For reference: FRIDA Ukraine Medical Mission dispatches regular medical teams to the frontline and hard-to-reach communities, sending more than 20 health professionals, including neurologists, surgeons, gynecologists, internists, dermatologists, and others. During each deployment, residents receive free consultations, examinations, and diagnostic tests. In recent months, the teams have also broadened their services to include early cancer screening to detect the disease at its most treatable stage.

• volunteers
• Chernihiv
• Kherson
• Sumy

Before russia’s full-scale invasion, Andrii Haliuha worked as an electrical engineer in Chernihiv. When russian forces pushed into the region, he rushed to repair damaged power lines and soon found himself assisting neighbors who could not access food or medicine on their own. What began as individual acts of support quickly grew into a full-fledged volunteer effort.

After the liberation of Chernihiv, Haliuha rallied a team of volunteers to help rebuild destroyed homes, and in some cases, construct new ones from the ground up. Their work expanded as new needs emerged. They started weaving camouflage nets and later shifted to a more technical mission: assembling first-person-view drones for Ukrainian troops.

Galyuga went on to establish a nonprofit organization called “Because We Can”, which now focuses on producing FPV drones, 3D-printing parts and components for military equipment, and assembling power banks for soldiers at the front.

Interviews with Andrii Haliuha can be arranged in Chernihiv or remotely.

• volunteers
• Chernihiv

Yuliia Stefaniuk is the head of the International Charity Organization World Central Kitchen’s mission in Ukraine and one of the women who, from the very first days of the full-scale invasion, joined organizing humanitarian aid in the country.

Before the full-scale war, she lived in Lviv and for over eleven years worked as the managing partner of !FEST Catering and Just Lviv It! — partner projects of the !FEST Holding of Emotions. Yuliia graduated from the Faculty of Economics at Ivan Franko National University of Lviv with a degree in sociology and worked in the insurance business in Kyiv for some time.

When the invasion began, Yuliia was among the first to join World Central Kitchen in Lviv. In March 2022, she organized the first large-scale hot meal production for refugees arriving in Lviv and played an active role in creating the logistical and organizational processes that enabled WCK to rapidly scale up and operate across Ukraine, including frontline communities. To date, World Central Kitchen has provided over 290 million meals as part of its mission in Ukraine. Currently, the organization provides hot meals, distributes food and vegetable kits, supports evacuation centers, delivers water and bread to communities on the front lines, and implements long-term programs to restore local food security, particularly by helping families grow their own food and opening kitchens for internally displaced persons.

Over the course of two years during the war, Yuliia served as the executive director of the Ukraine Foundation, which was established with the support of the Howard G. Buffett Foundation. She is also a co-founder of the Hachiko Pet Foundation in the United States, which supports frontline animal shelters by providing food, medical assistance, and sterilization services, as well as facilitating adoptions.

Currently, Yuliia coordinates one of the country’s largest hot meal programs, created in response to the full-scale invasion. She works tirelessly to ensure that citizens have stable and easy access to humanitarian aid, even under the most difficult conditions.

Yuliia is a mother of two children and the rescuer of a cat she adopted from the de-occupied city of Izium.

By prior arrangement, journalists have the opportunity to speak with Yuliia in person in Lviv or online.

• casualties
• food
• volunteers
• women
• Lviv

At the beginning of the war, a women’s volunteer firefighting team was formed in the Velykoomelianska community in the Rivne oblast. Alla Karpiuk, the head of this territorial community, initiated the creation of the team. She recalls responding to fires three times before the team’s formation, when houses and dry grass were burning. Alla coordinated with firefighters and assisted in saving people’s property. This experience motivated her to launch the initiative.

Currently, the firefighting team consists of 21 volunteers. Its members are local council deputies, accountants, and saleswomen. A woman who lost her husband in the war has also joined the initiative.

The team underwent professional training with the State Emergency Service of Ukraine and obtained certification. The women learned first aid, how to deploy fire hoses, how to use fire extinguishers, how to work with the water supply, and more. The team also participated in a two-day international training session.

This year, the team has joined rescuers on 36 call-outs in total.

Journalists have the opportunity to speak with team members in person or online by prior arrangement.

• volunteers
• women
• Rivne

On April 1, 2022, Jay Rivera, a 38-year-old former account manager from Pennsylvania, boarded a plane from New York to Warsaw for his first trip to Europe. Leaving behind his family and job, he came with a mission: to support Ukrainians affected by the war.

Rivera began by coordinating foreign volunteers and managing logistics in Przemyśl, Poland. By October 2022, he had taken the helm of Hope Shelter refugee center for Ukrainians.

In November 2024, he moved to Ukraine’s Lviv region to start Phoenix, a reintegration center and shelter for displaced persons. It currently hosts up to 48 residents, providing housing, meals, professional and language courses, and psychological support. The center’s operations are funded through foreign donors, grants, and private contributions. Plans are underway to expand the facility to accommodate veterans and their families.

Jay Rivera is available to meet with visitors in the Lviv region, both online and in person, by prior arrangement.

• volunteers
• Lviv

Currently, several hundred animals are being cared for at the Bat Rehabilitation Center in Kharkiv. However, volunteers explain that this is only the beginning of the winter season, and they expect to take in several thousand bats under their care, as they did last year. The bats are brought to the Center from various Ukrainian cities.

There, specialists help the animals survive the winter, a time when bats become vulnerable and require special conditions. Animals needing extra care are fed and treated.

Due to blackouts, the center purchased a generator and an EcoFlow unit because the refrigerators where the bats are kept require constant power.

Since the full-scale war began, the rehabilitation center has increased its operations. Specialists are now focused on bat conservation and scientific research.

Journalists can speak with the Bat Rehabilitation Center coordinator, biologist Alona Shulenko, online or in person in Kharkiv by prior arrangement.

• animals
• blackout
• volunteers
• Kharkiv

Before the war, Bohdan’s company in Poltava produced ice cream and frozen foods, such as traditional Ukrainian varenyky (dumplings) and syrnyky (cheese pancakes). He had never cooked hot meals or worked in public catering. That all changed in February 2022, when families fleeing the war began arriving in Poltava. Bohdan posted a simple message on social media: “We know how to cook. If anyone needs help, we are ready.”

His company began cooking hot meals with leftover frozen ingredients and distributing them to those in need. Soon, Bohdan had to sell freezers and a delivery van to pay for ingredients and continue feeding people escaping the war. “I was a few days away from shutting down,” he says. “We had no money left, but people still had to eat.” It was then that he learned about World Central Kitchen (WCK).

With their support, Bohdan was able to cook up to 5,000 hot lunches a day and develop a delivery system. His team delivered food to schools, dormitories, and shelters across Poltava. Since 2022, they have prepared over 427,000 meals in partnership with WCK.

What began as emergency food relief has since evolved into Poltavski Pundyky, a food company built on the values WCK tapped into — dignity, care, speed, and community. Today, his team runs five dining spaces across the city. They also still deliver hundreds of free meals daily to those affected by the war. Many employees are internally displaced persons who first came to Poltava after russia’s full-scale invasion. Bohdan’s business is a key emergency partner for WCK and is ready to cook hot meals in the aftermath of missile strikes or other emergencies.

Journalists can speak with Bohdan in Poltava or online, by prior arrangement. Representatives of World Central Kitchen are also available for communication.

• food
• volunteers
• Poltava