Why There Won't Be New Recipes? Sponsorship.

Hello, dear readers of my website! Let me start by saying that at this moment I, the author of Kamelena.com/ru, and my family are alive and relatively safe. But things could have turned out very differently if we hadn't made the instant decision to leave on that terrible day of February 24, 2022 — a day that will go down in history forever.

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Update from 03/16/22: I published my first article on Patreon.

On that day, a horrific and despicable war against Ukraine began. On February 24 at 5 in the morning, all the residents of Kharkiv — including me — were woken up by missile strikes on the outskirts of the city. Three hours later we were already on the road, having thrown everything valuable into the trunk in sheer panic, with no idea when we'd be able to return. Along the way we saw wild lines at pharmacies, stores, ATMs, and most of all at gas stations! Terrible traffic jams, explosions still rumbling outside the city, no clear idea which direction was safe to go — and we had two children in the car. Somehow we made it onto the ring road, and our grim "journey" began. On the first night we couldn't find a place to stay, since everything everywhere was already taken by refugees just like us. We had to "sleep" for 2 hours sitting in the car before driving on. On the second night we managed to spend the night with strangers in a remote village — a huge thank you to them. On the third day we reached some very distant relatives who were able to take us in, and that is where we are now.

After we left, a real hell broke out in Kharkiv! For two days there were strikes destroying all of the city's strategically important buildings. And then, since taking the city proved impossible, a systematic bombardment and destruction of civilian neighborhoods began. On the very first day alone, 88 residential buildings were hit:

People have been trapped in bomb shelters — subway stations and basements — for over a week without leaving. Babies are being born in basements too:

There is no public transportation, pharmacies are closed, the stores that are open are completely empty — a true humanitarian catastrophe. Chaotic shelling of residential buildings continues to this day. And this is what the city center looks like now:

Hundreds of civilians have been killed, not to mention the soldiers on both sides. In the first-grade class at the school where our daughter studies, a child was killed along with his entire family; another boy's mother was killed, and he himself is in the emergency room with a gunshot wound to the head. By the way, one of the schools now looks like this:

This is all real! This is what is happening in Kharkiv! The same is happening in other cities on the right bank of Ukraine! Russians, wake up! This is a genocide of the Ukrainian people! Do not send your children off to war! Do not believe what your deranged tsar with his imperial ambitions says on television. Look for real information on the internet, if it hasn't been cut off from you yet.

According to UN data, 1.2 million refugees have left Ukraine since the start of Russia's invasion. And the number of internally displaced people and those who have fled to the western part of Ukraine is impossible to count.

We are among them. My family and I are now refugees! Which means — we are in a strange city, with no home of our own, with young children, with no work (both my husband and I are now unemployed, which means we will literally soon be without money), and with no prospects! Thank you for that, Putin!

Just before all this, I had gotten my affairs in order back in Kharkiv and was planning to continue cooking new recipes for my beloved site Kamelena.com/ru. But now everything is still back in Kharkiv — my tripod, my favorite plates, teapots, all my dishes, and the beautiful white tablecloth I used to photograph my recipes on. And you can't really buy groceries here either; we're in a small town where everything gets swept off the shelves quickly, so we have to make do with whatever we managed to buy. It's war! No room for luxuries!

I have registered on Patreon. Perhaps some of you, my readers, would like to support me and become my patron — that is, my sponsor. Patreon has different subscription tiers, and depending on the tier, different options for communication will be available. For example, I will answer any culinary questions in the chat about any recipe on the site. If something didn't turn out right, we'll work together to figure out what went wrong. I also plan to write new articles on culinary topics, and Patreon subscribers will be the first to hear about and read them!

Become my sponsor! Patreon! I will be incredibly grateful to all my patrons!

P.S. In the near future, Russia may block websites whose servers are not located on Russian territory — essentially cutting Russia off from the internet. The Kamelena website will always be accessible from anywhere in the world as usual, but residents of Russia will need to use a VPN.