The certificate hangs where Edward Wilton can see it every day — his son’s recognition from the Ukrainian government for his service.
“It’s very important,” Wilton says, “because my son said he didn’t mind dying, but he wanted to be remembered.”
The younger Wilton, also named Edward, came to Ukraine as a 22-year-old in April 2022. He was killed in the Luhansk region a year later.
The Wiltons have Ukrainian roots and relatives in the country’s west, where a memorial now honors his son. The father, who spent most of his adult life practicing law in Florida, decided to go to Ukraine to help where his son no longer could.
“I returned to help Ukraine, and to help out what I think is my country too, in this time,” he says.
Wilton found his own place in a Kharkiv kitchen named for its location, 20 kilometers from the front line. “Hell’s Kitchen” opened the day after Russia launched its full-scale invasion. Wilton joined as a volunteer in 2023. Three years on, he coordinates the foreign volunteers, who now make up about one in three of the kitchen’s workers.
More than 200 have passed through, from Sweden, Japan, Britain, Poland, the United States.
“The volunteers at Hell’s Kitchen take part in everything, absolutely everything we do,” says Liudmyla Horoshka, the kitchen’s coordinator.
Tomasz came from Poland a year ago to be with his girlfriend. He works as a climbing instructor, has learned Ukrainian, and spends enough of his free time in the kitchen that he now bakes Ukrainian bread.
“Ukraine is so small, you could say, while Russia is so big. It is such an injustice,” he says. “There are many reasons why we need to help.”
By lunchtime, meals are packed into insulated containers and sent across Kharkiv, including to hospitals treating patients in the front-line city. More than 1,200 meals leave the kitchen every day.
“Every day we can see who’s taking food and where it’s going,” says Ryan, a volunteer from Britain, “and it’s quite clear it’s people who need it.”
The menu is simple — soup, buckwheat, a meatball. In a city living with war, a hot meal that arrives every day matters. And as patients across Kharkiv finish lunch, Wilton and the others are already at work on tomorrow’s.
