Original version

BBC World Service News Internet

Assignment

Factual

Investigations and journeys into the heart of global events from BBC correspondents.

BBC World Service Australasia

BBC World Service East and Southern Africa Schedule

BBC World Service East and Southern Africa

BBC World Service Online

BBC World Service schedule for American satellite radio and the Caribbean

BBC World Service Americas and the Caribbean

BBC World Service

BBC World Service South Asia

BBC World Service Europe and the Middle East

BBC World Service West and Central Africa Schedule

BBC World Service West and Central Africa

BBC World Service East Asia

Assignment: Ukraine’s frontline bakery revisited

Documentaries

News

Workers in the bakery in Marinka.

10/02/2022 GMT

Ukraine’s frontline bakery revisited

BBC World Service - Assignment, Ukraine’s frontline bakery revisited

Lucy Ash catches up with a warzone bakery comforting people in an east Ukrainian town

A new bakery in east Ukraine offered war weary people the taste of peacetime. But as an all-out conflict with Russia looms, there are fears for the bakery’s future.

Lucy Ash catches up with a warzone bakery comforting people in an east Ukrainian town. She visited in 2017 to tell the story of a small enterprise that was bringing hope to a trapped community living near the frontline. The town of Marinka is in the buffer zone – the ‘grey zone’ - that separates Ukraine from the Dontesk region  – now claimed and occupied by Russian backed separatists.  For the town’s inhabitants the low-intensity conflict had become an unavoidable part of daily life. But there was one bright spot amidst the gloom – a bakery. It was Ukraine’s first frontline workplace-generating enterprise, and a haven from the politics, propaganda, and violence that had been tearing the town apart. But now, more than four years on,  with Russian troops now massing along Ukraine’s eastern border, the threat of all out conflict looms. The bakery’s owner Oleg Tkachenko tells Lucy Ash he hopes there will not be an all out conflict.  He fears  an invasion could destroy everything that he and his community have built up over the past five years.  

(Image: Workers in the bakery in Marinka. Credit: Frederick Paxton)

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Assignment

Ukraine’s frontline bakery revisited

Genres

Formats

Brand

BBC World Service News Internet

About BBC World Service