‘It keeps me calm’, says Kharkiv chef cooking to cope with Ukraine war

Alone in his high-rise flat, Igor Mezencev has found hope through childhood recipes and helping to coordinate food supplies

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Before the war, Igor Mezencev loved to go into the forest with Ukraine's best chefs, equipped with just four ingredients - salt, sugar, vinegar and oil - and try to cook high cuisine in the wild.

Now, with his city, Kharkiv, under heavy bombardment, Mezencev is confined to his high-rise flat. But using whatever ingredients he can find, he has continued to cook and invent - baking bread from untoasted buckwheat groats, cooking on his balcony and revisiting childhood recipes. He says this has helped him to cope with the terror of the shelling and airstrikes.