Ukraine Vegan Kitchen - Hope During Wartime

Standing with Marta and Oksana, who traveled here to speak about the Lviv Vegan Kitchen, LVK, located in Lviv, Ukraine, I thought of the meaning of cognitive dissonance to explain what I was feeling. For several months NW VEG staff had been discussing the possibility of a visit by these two women, who would be on their way to an international conference in Los Angeles, through Portland. Could we make arrangements to host them here? I reviewed everything I could find about them online and found the story to be a fascinating juxtaposition of the words “war” and “vegan.” How could those categories possibly relate? From our safe distance, we can read of the experience they went through, the millions of people uprooted from their lives, fleeing violent aggression, disconnected from any sense of routine. Could we, here in Portland, fully understand the motives and emotions being shared with us that linked the extremes of aggressive violence and a nonviolent lifestyle?

Marta and Oksana found themselves in such a situation, living along an escape route out of their country, suddenly in the midst of those displaced people all looking for any sense of continuity. The sisters are part of their local vegan community, experiencing many food resources suddenly shutting down and closing. Rather than choosing to flee, though, they saw a need and made up their minds to rally other friends to join in starting a vegan food service that they named the Lviv Vegan Kitchen. This took root with much determination and volunteer help, and the idea grew to be able to provide hundreds of free vegan meals per day, and then to ship vegan care packages around their country to ever expanding subsistence requests being sent to them.

The LVK website, easily reachable as lvivvegankitchen.com states at the top of the page: “We serve free vegan meals for refugees and support vegan soldiers in Ukrainian Armed Forces.” Many who need food there do not think of themselves as vegan, but LVK provides wholesome, vegan, nutritionally enhanced, meatless and dairy-free meals. Those recruited into the Ukraine military defense have been a priority since the government does not honor ethical dietary needs. What does someone do when they have chosen an ethical diet respecting the lives of other creatures, and then finds the foods they are given do not meet the criteria?

We think of Portland as a vegan city because the word is in common use here and so many of us hold that it is wrong to exploit animals as food. In Ukraine, like the rest of Europe, veganism has also been getting more traction. Agewise, the apparent majority of support is coming from young adults.

We have so much evidence that a vegan diet is better for health and longevity, and far better for the land used to cultivate our food choices. Many attracted to trying a vegan diet do it for health reasons, and many do it for environmental reasons, but the most dedicated and stringent advocates have chosen their vegan lifestyle as an ethical statement, an ongoing daily connection they have with human culture. Those in the ever-growing world vegan community are choosing a path of least harm, embracing nonviolence. Let us stand with these courageous vegan women in Ukraine and help to continue advocating for the awareness of the one thing we each can do. 

Their Portland presentation can be viewed here: Hope During Wartime (YouTube)