Nashville residents rallied around Ukraine this weekend as the eastern European food vendor Leningrad Pop-Up joined with the Richland Park Farmers Market. The event, “Cook For Ukraine,” included more than two dozen local businesses and raised the spirits of locals with personal connections to the conflict, as well as more than $13,000 for UNICEF’s humanitarian efforts.
Shoppers in a long line waited about half an hour to get their hands on traditional eastern European foods.
Alexis Marshall WPLN NewsHundreds of people showed up to the Cook For Ukraine event at the Richland Park Farmers Market
Alexei Smirnov had already scored his brown paper bagful when he spoke to WPLN News. He’s a Russian immigrant with family living close to the border in Ukraine. He said he hasn’t been able to get in touch with them.
“The past month, it’s been a really bleak time,” Smirnov said. “Even though we’re not hiding in bomb shelters and being murdered. I don’t think it feels any, any easier and I’m not really exaggerating. It’s been a rough time for all of us.”
But he said the outpouring of community support gave him the first glimmer of hope he’s felt since the war began.
Katya Karagadayeva runs the Leningrad Pop-Up. She said she was inspired to do the farmers market event after seeing footage of Ukrainian fleeing their homes. Karagadayeva herself was an Armenian refugee from Azerbaijan and moved to the US in the late 1990s. She said putting the event together was healing.
“So many people came together and offered help,” she said. “I had volunteers from the community who came to help cook. Or even, they didn’t know the recipes, I just told them, you know, ‘chop this’ and ‘pack this’ and, you know, and they did this.”
Alexis Marshall WPLN NewsIn addition to savory dishes like piroshki and shashlik, Leningrad Pop-Up also sold sweet treats like cookies, candies and pakhlava.
She says others donated kitchen space. Farmers donated honey for the vendor’s highly popular honey cakes.
“I think I cried almost every day,” said Karagadayeva, “because it was just so touching that people really wanted to help, and they put this trust in me that I was going to put it all together.”
She says continued community support will be important since the US has agreed to accept 100,000 Ukrainians as refugees.
Additional support for Ukraine also departed from Tennessee this weekend in the form of a major donation of medical supplies, including medications and emergency field hospital gear.
The Commercial Appeal newspaper reports Memphis-based FedEx offered one of its large Boeing jets to carry 76 tons of supplies to Warsaw, Poland. Like during past international emergencies, the company has partnered with the humanitarian organization Direct Relief to handle distribution.
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