Did Ukrainian pensioners queue in line to get free bread because of a food shortage in the city of Chernihiv, in Ukraine? No, that's not true: The video shows bread being distributed at a specific event, organized by a Christian volunteer group, after a religious service at the Ukrainian Church of Evangelic Christians of the Volyn region, in Chernihiv. The people in the video are parishioners receiving bread during a ceremony aimed at preaching the gospel.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) on TikTok by sputnik.by on December 16, 2023, with a caption (translated from Russian to English by Lead Stories staff) that read:
Pensioners from Chernihiv have to wait in line for free bread #ukraine#chernihiv#bread#pensioner#news
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Sun Dec 31 08:36:43 2023 UTC)
The footage is not related to a food shortage in the Ukrainian town. The Ukrainian Church of Evangelic Christians in the Volyn region regularly organizes sermons for the citizens of Chernihiv. After that, bread is distributed among the parishioners, to preach the Gospel. Volunteer group Not By Bread Alone (Ukrainian: Не хлібом єдиним), seen here distributing bread in the video, started distributing bread in 2022 after the Russian army left (archived here) Chernihiv.
The bread seen in the video is a specific bread, called Victory (Ukrainian: Перемога), in support of the Ukrainian soldiers, baked in Kyiv's bakery Craft Bakery - by Dubova for free, and donated to different groups and organizations. The shape of the bread in the video is the same as appears at the 4:31 mark in a March 2023 documentary about Not By Bread Alone on YouTube (archived here); however, "Victory" is not visible because of the low quality of the video on TikTok.
The bakery was opened (archived here) in Kyiv with the primary initiative to supply bread to the Kyiv region and Ukrainian soldiers, as explained in a post on Facebook by the bakery. Their bread was then used also by volunteer groups and chaplains, spreading "physical and spiritual bread" to the people suffering from the war, the post continues.
