[ad_1]
Back at the outdoor food market, butchers stood behind refrigerated cases heaped with meat, waiting for customers. Prices for beef, pork, chicken and dairy, sourced from farms in western Ukraine that have remained largely untouched by Russian strikes, had risen only modestly. Even so, business was slow. “Prices for these products aren’t higher, but people are cutting back sharply,” said Lesia, a meat seller at the market for 20 years, who, like many older Ukrainians, was reluctant to give her full name for fear of drawing attention. “Still, we can’t give up,” she said. “After all the things Russia’s done to us, we will never give up.”
Stalls that used to be run by vegetable and meat producers from Kharkiv and Kherson lay dark, shuttered after their owners were driven out of business by Russia’s invasion.
Yoroslava Ilhytska, a cheese seller, gazed at the once-bustling counters of her missing neighbors, bare save for an old weighing scale gathering dust. “They were bombed out,” she said. “They lost all their goods and a factory, so they had to close.”
Pungent spices, dark chocolates and dried figs perfumed the air from brimming plastic bins nearby. Such delicacies, imported from Turkey, Chili and Azerbaijan, were less sought after and more costly because of the war, said Oksana, a stall keeper who would only give her first name.
Source link
