In 2022, a Russian drone destroyed a bakery in the town of Makariv near Kyiv. It was from there that our village store always got "Makariv" bread—a dark, rye-flour "brick." I really liked it. The drone blew up the bakery early in the morning while the bakers were working. Several people died. And since then, there's been no "Makarovsky" bread in our village store. I don't know whether the destroyed bakery in Makariv was rebuilt or a new one was built, but I've never eaten that rye bread again. If I see that or similar bread, I'll definitely buy a loaf. But at the same time, I'm afraid my imagination will inevitably add the taste of blood to that bread. It was the taste of blood that filled my mouth back then, in 2022, when I learned of the destroyed bakery and the murdered bakers.

Since then, bakeries, bread delivery trucks, bread stores, and kiosks have fallen victim to Russian attacks dozens of times. Hundreds of farmers have died trying to grow wheat and provide the country with bread. Bread has never disappeared from the stores. Only the stores themselves were reduced to rubble before the last residents evacuated from the devastated towns and villages of Donbas and Zaporizhia. Bread disappears only when people disappear. Without man, bread loses its meaning.