Stephen Rees's blog

A guest post

Thanks again for your support for https://pizzaForUkraine.com/.   Someday, they’re going to tell stories about all this.  

Feel free to share this with anyone who might be interested; it helps enormously.  Feel free to share with your local pizza proprietors, too; perhaps we can strike up a partnership! 

We’ve passed 2150 pizzas.

In Kharkiv, pizza delivery has become even more worrisome and nerve-wracking than ever, as Russian missiles continue to arrive. They appear at unpredictable places and intervals, although the 4AM wake-up call from Belgorod is a persistent — and deeply disturbing — feature of daily life in Kharkiv.  The pizza crew wears body armor all the time and takes every precaution, and the kitchen folk are spending more time than they’d like in the basement when shells fall nearby.

The  streets and roads are a mess, and the Apocalypse Van is frequently needed for urgent, long-distance transport. But the pizza crew has managed to stage some really big deliveries using regular cars.  Here’s a weekend event staged in cooperation with the Kharkiv Judo Club.

Driving  around Kharkiv has some special challenges!

Here’s a really big delivery to a town at the edge of the Kharkiv region that’s hosting some 5000 people whose homes have been destroyed. Quite a big effort for a town of 500!  The local school, used as a shelter, is full, so now villagers are taking families into their homes.

We’ve also been sending some pizzas to Kharkiv hospitals (where everyone is too busy), emergency crews, and checkpoints.  Right now, the pizza crew is planning a big trip to one of the burned out housing blocks in Kharkiv where people still live, despite all the damage and debris.

Individually, we perhaps cannot bring peace or victory, or even warm and dry homes for half a million people. But we can send pizza. It’s not nothing.  Thanks.

Mark Bernstein 

Eastgate Systems, Inc