Feeding Ukraine’s army over the festive season
Ukrainecast
BBC
4.7 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 29 December 2023
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What's it like to fight for your country over the festive season, when the rest of the world is celebrating with their family and friends?
We hear from an officer who heads an artillery reconnaissance team about what last Christmas was like - and his hopes for this holiday.
And Chef Zhenya has set up a military kitchen in Zaporizhya that makes 68,000 meals a week for a military unit. He tells us how he does it - and what he’s putting on the menu to celebrate the end of 2023.
And the BBC’s Irena Taranyuk has been busy cooking kutia, the traditional Ukrainian Christmas dish, which Victoria gets to try for the first time.
Today’s episode is presented by Victoria Derbyshire and Vitaly Shevchenko. The programme was made by Clare Williamson. The producers were Arsenii Sokolov and Ivana Davidovic. The technical producer was Mike Regaard. The series producer is Lucy Boast. The senior news editor is Sam Bonham. Email Ukrainecast@bbc.co.uk with your questions and comments. You can also send us a message or voice note via WhatsApp, Signal or Telegram to +44 330 1239480
You can join the Ukrainecast discussion on Newscast’s Discord server here: tinyurl.com/ukrainecastdiscord
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts. |
| 0:04.6 | Hello, it's 673 days since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. |
| 0:10.8 | The festive season is in full swing, and you'll be listening to this when much of the world will be on holiday, |
| 0:17.0 | taking a break with family friends and eating and drinking traditional foods. |
| 0:22.0 | As listeners may remember from last year those traditions vary a lot across Ukraine |
| 0:27.4 | not just with food like the traditional dish of Kutia but also the dates of when |
| 0:32.2 | the big feasts are eaten and when the celebrations happen. |
| 0:36.0 | Yes Kutia is raising its sweet little head again and we're going to be talking about it a bit later. |
| 0:44.0 | With the help of our friend and colleague Irena from the Ukrainian service. |
| 0:49.0 | Hello Renna. |
| 0:50.0 | Hello, Vittale, hello Victoria. |
| 0:52.0 | And this year, as you will know, is very different in Ukraine when it comes to Christmas |
| 0:58.0 | because after what, more than a century of being, of it being celebrated in January now it's been moved to December. |
| 1:06.2 | Why? |
| 1:07.2 | December the 25th because the Ukrainian Orthodox Church decided to adopt more contemporary |
| 1:12.4 | calendar and to move in with the times. |
| 1:16.0 | And how do you both feel about that? Because obviously when you were growing up it was January. |
| 1:20.0 | What do you think? Does it feel weird? |
| 1:22.0 | It feels right to be honest. |
| 1:24.6 | Does it? Absolutely because some holidays would still be with |
| 1:30.3 | Orthodox calendar but Orthodox churches in Europe have adopted Gregorian calendar long ago, some of them at least, |
| 1:37.8 | and in the eyes of believers, Ukrainian believers, Orthodox believers, |
... |
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