“Aunt Soup”: young woman spent over 2 months cooking from a limited number of products for civilians trapped in the basement of Mariupol’s Azovstal
Natalia is smiling in the photo made near the evacuation bus that took her and other civilians out of Azovstal bomb shelters. The woman said she and her husband spent two months and four days in a bomb shelter at the metallurgical plant and that cooking helped them live and was a glimpse of hope in that dark, closed basement.
‘Aunt Soup” was a nickname she created for the kids to call her. Together with the children, she painted food from a peaceful life and then tried to embody the ‘picture’ from the available products. That’s how the dough made on water and canned was transformed, for example, into the most delicious pizza in the world.
Russia’s aggression reportedly caused one of the biggest humanitarian disasters in Mariupol. On May 9, 2022, the Head of the Donetsk Regional Military Administration, Pavlo Kyrylenko, announced that more than 100 civilians remain in the shelters at the Azovstal plant in blocked Mariupol.
