The Ukrainian flag is really an abstract landscape: a cobalt sky – perfect harvest weather – above a yellow wheatfield
n March 7th, less than a fortnight after Russia invaded Ukraine, an industrial bakery in Makariv, near Kyiv, was hit by Russian shells. At first people hoped that no one had been working there at the time. But this is Ukraine, where bread is taken seriously: 13 people had been killed.
Meanwhile, the bakers of Ukraine have been working harder than ever. Brick-shaped and flute-shaped loaves have been layered like munitions into rattling metal trays, part of the war effort. In Kherson, one man has been working 20 hours a day, producing thousands of loaves of “Victory Bread” to hand out from his truck round the streets of the beleaguered city. At a certain point he was kneading dough so long and so hard that his wrists seized up and he couldn’t open doors.
Food supplies are crucial in any conflict, but the role played by bread in this most modern war is striking. This is partly metaphorical: bread easily becomes a synonym for all food. In the desert, the devil asked a fasting Christ to turn stones into bread to prove his might; later, bread represented Christ’s own body, the simplest possible symbol of nourishment and salvation.
Bread can be made in minutes or proved over days, stowed in an airing cupboard among blankets and sheets; the very word in most languages is brief and direct, but its quality is patience. It takes kneading, pulling and pounding with no complaint, only to sit humbly at the side of things, eclipsed by a ragout of beef or a Victoria sponge. Bread has played this servant-role since time immemorial.
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