A Frenchman from Provence bakes bread for Kherson amid Russian shelling

French baker Loïc Nervi has traveled to the Kherson region for the third time on a humanitarian mission. In the liberated town of Kyselivka, he and his assistant baked up to 1,500 loaves of bread every day, which they distributed free of charge to residents of Kherson and the region’s de-occupied communities.

This was reported by the French radio station RFI.

Loïc Nervi, 43, whom Ukrainians call Vitalik, set up a mobile bakery in a converted van. Inside are two convection ovens, a dough mixer, baking cabinets, a generator, and other equipment, allowing the bakery to operate autonomously even near the front lines.

This year, the mobile bakery was set up in the liberated town of Kyselivka. Together with his longtime colleague Robert, the Frenchman would start work as early as midnight or 3 a.m. Each day, the volunteers baked between one and one and a half thousand loaves, which they distributed to hospitals, rescue workers, firefighters, as well as residents of Kherson and the region’s liberated settlements.

All the baked goods were made using Loïc Nervi’s own recipe, and the flour and other ingredients were purchased with their own funds.

The baker said he first came to help Ukraine in the spring of 2022, when he delivered a humanitarian shipment to the Ukrainian-Polish border. Since November 2023, he has been regularly carrying out humanitarian missions directly in Ukraine.

<picture></picture>PHOTO: Loïc Nervi / Facebook

During his first trip to the Kherson region, he worked in a community kitchen, but due to a lack of space and power supply issues, he decided to set up a fully self-sufficient mobile bakery. To do this, with the support of donors, his customers, and his own funds, he purchased a truck and converted it for baking bread.

According to Loic Nervi, this trip to the Kherson region marks his eleventh humanitarian mission in Ukraine. In addition to the Kherson region, he has worked in frontline communities in the Kharkiv, Sumy, Chernihiv, Mykolaiv, and Zaporizhzhia regions.

Андрій Колісніченко