Kyiv resident says food supplies in city running low

It was “next to impossible” to buy food in Ukraine’s capital on Thursday, says Julia Goldenberg, founder of the All-Ukrainian Charitable Fund “To You” (ACF 2U), speaking to the Times of Israel by phone on Friday morning.

“There were queues in the supermarkets, no delivery from different suppliers,” she says.

She did not hear explosions overnight, but her friends in other parts of the capital did, Goldenberg says.

“People actually were woken up yesterday because of this,” she says.

ACF 2U founder Julia Goldenberg holding a book her organization published on Ukrainian Righteous among the Nations, February 16, 2022 (Lazar Berman/Times of Israel)

Traffic jams out of Kyiv were so bad that residents who left at 4 p.m. were only reaching Zhitomyr, 135 kilometers away, in the morning.

Two nights ago, residents were expecting a Russian attack at 4 a.m., she says. “So at quarter to five, I decided to go to sleep.”

“We hear the alarm from time to time,” says Goldenberg, whose grandfather fought to Berlin with the Red Army in World War II. Other members of her family were murdered at Babi Yar in Kyiv in late 1941.

ACF-2U provided food and supplies to its most needy clients yesterday.

“They are extremely worried,” she says. “Some even asked how to leave the country.”

“People are exhausted, people are stressed,” she says sadly. “People should know the Russians are aggressors. They kill civilians. They are bastards.”

She hasn’t been in touch with the Israeli embassy so far. “I haven’t wanted to live in Israel because there are bombings, because it’s always under the threat of war.”