With no job and speaking little of the language, Olena Vinykova has relied on her local food bank to cope with the “very hard” situation she finds herself in since fleeing Ukraine for Germany seven months ago. If she had arrived any later, her situation could have been even worse.
Surging food and fuel prices mean millions more people in Germany are struggling to make ends meet, forcing many food banks to shut their doors to thousands of new applicants. That includes the one used by Vinykova in Friedberg, about 15 miles north of Frankfurt.
The former nurse, who left her husband and grown-up children in Bakhmut, now on the front line of Ukraine’s war with Russia, asked the Financial Times to “say thank you” to the volunteers for their “amazing” work.