Soldiers visit Om-Nom-Nom, a sushi and pizza restaurant in Sloviansk, Ukraine. Sushi restaurants are very popular in Ukraine and provide a sense of normality during war.
Claire Harbage/NPR
SLOWIANSK, Ukraine — About a 30-minute drive from the rubble-strewn hellscape of Russian-occupied Bakhmut, two Ukrainian soldiers wait for a bite to eat in a brightly lit restaurant on a lightless street. Sushi rolls. Sixty-four different pieces.
“We are living people,” says one of the soldiers, an artilleryman with the call sign Traumat. “It is very important to be able to come back [from the front lines] and have something of our normal lives.”
“Dinners like this connect us,” he says.
Almost everywhere in Ukraine — even in the frontline cities devastated by artillery — the country's battered but vital consumer economy is still doing well.
MPR News is member-supported. Gifts from individuals fuel everything you find here. Gift any amount to become a member today!
Sushi rolls with cream cheese, a popular ingredient in Ukrainian sushi, are served at Island Sushi in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine.
Claire Harbage/NPR
With air raid sirens and rocket attacks, people are still spending money at malls, grocery stores and nail salons. Despite the mass migration of people, cafes, bars and sit-down restaurants in cities large and small are still busy and crowded.
Of all the businesses still in operation, however, perhaps the least likely are the country's popular and nearly ubiquitous sushi restaurants.
Because they rely on imported ingredients like fresh fish, restaurants have had to contend with supply problems, border protests and power outages. Staff shortages, long a problem in Ukraine's restaurant industry, have worsened as young people have fled or been drafted.
Oleksander Lapshunkov runs the Island Sushi restaurant in Zaporizhia.
Claire Harbage/NPR
“People could make films about how Ukrainian companies adapted to all this and survived,” says Oleksander Lapshunkov, the manager of Island Sushi in Zaporizhia. “We have proven that we can overcome anything.”
Ukraine's economy is battered but undefeated
Russia's invasion of Ukraine has affected the country's economy. The United Nations estimates that Ukraine's economy shrank by more than 30 percent in the first year after Russia's full-scale invasion. Ukraine's Finance Ministry said it was the biggest recession the country has experienced since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
2023 was better. Aided by tens of billions of dollars in foreign aid, the economy stabilized as businesses adjusted to the realities of war. In an opinion piece, Yulia Svyrdenko, Ukraine's economy minister, wrote that they are forecasting growth of 4.6 percent in 2024.
Island Sushi in Zaporizhzhia is about 20 miles from the trenches and minefields that now scar southern Ukraine.
Claire Harbage/NPR
But questions about further financial aid from the USA and the European Union are cause for concern. Svyrydenko said Ukraine was making contingency plans to keep the economy running.
Keeping the consumer economy running and money changing hands is crucial to Ukraine's survival in a prolonged war. People need jobs. The state needs tax revenue. But it also offers civilians a semblance of normal life.
“Being in a restaurant, sitting in a restaurant, is almost like psychotherapy,” says Olha Nasonova, a restaurant consultant in Kyiv and co-founder of the National Restaurant Association of Ukraine. “This is how we feel the normality of life when the life around us is not normal.”
Olha Nasonova, restaurant consultant and co-founder of the National Restaurant Association of Ukraine, sits in a sushi restaurant in downtown Kiev.
Claire Harbage/NPR
Which brings us back to sushi. After the end of the Soviet Union, the Japanese delicacy became very popular in Ukraine. The flavors, the presentation, the sticks were all considered exotic.
Sushi has quickly become a dish that reflects Ukraine's efforts to distance itself from its dull Soviet past, Nasanova said, and is popular on special occasions and holidays.
Importing ingredients was a challenge
Today there are sushi restaurants in almost every corner of Ukraine. Sometimes in large numbers.
Providing them with fresh ingredients – especially in the first months of the full-scale Russian invasion – was a challenge.
Trucking companies, nervous about missile attacks and roadblocks, were reluctant to ship supplies for much of the first year. Russia's blockade of Ukraine's Black Sea ports continues to choke off trade along the country's southern coast.
A food warehouse in Zaporizhia receives a shipment of fresh fish to be sold to sushi restaurants. They also sell other sushi ingredients including soy sauce, rice and cream cheese, which is popular in Ukrainian sushi rolls.
Claire Harbage/NPR
More recently, protests at the Polish border have dramatically slowed imports into Ukraine, costing the country's economy more than $150 million.
Serhiy Fedorchenko, the manager of a food supply company in Zaporizhzhia, says the protests have not affected their ability to get fresh fish and other sushi ingredients such as wasabi, seaweed and, for the Ukrainian sushi palate, cream cheese.
“The Japanese don’t know what we put in our sushi,” he jokes, pointing to stacked buckets of cream cheese in the so-called sushi corner of their warehouse. “But people like it, so it’s good for business.”
Serhiy Fedorchenko is the manager of a food warehouse in Zaporizhia.
Claire Harbage/NPR
Power outages caused by Russia's targeted attacks on Ukraine's energy infrastructure have forced food suppliers and restaurants to invest in power generators. Guidelines have been introduced to allow perishable foods such as fish to pass through the long queues at the Polish border, says Fedorchenko.
“It’s not normal, but we’ve adapted,” he says.
Restaurant managers like Lapshunkov are also trying to adapt. As restaurants are hungry for employees, they have been forced to increase salaries and create other work incentives.
Sushi has become a dish that reflects Ukraine's efforts to distance itself from its Soviet past.
Claire Harbage/NPR
Business at Island Sushi is going well, says Lapshunkov, also because of the increased military presence in southern Ukraine. And partly because civilians are longing for a sense of normality after almost two years of war.
“The philosophy of Ukrainians in general is to feed our guests, feed ourselves. We like food,” he says. “We try to give people a piece of normal life.”
NPR's Hanna Palamarenko contributed reporting.
Copyright 2024 NPR. For more information, visit https://www.npr.org.