Using a borrowed coffee machine, 19-year-old Ukrainian barista Ivan Demchenko serves coffee and cuts through a window where customers line up.

Six days later, when he and two of his friends started selling coffee through a window in Lviv, the place’s reputation spread, and the chicken and pineapple pies began to run out.

Some customers wrote on social media that young entrepreneurs from the devastated district of Kiev are starting a business and many want to help them.

Among the requests, Demchenko described how he and his 31-year-old friend, Serhii Stoian, fled Kiev at the start of the Russian invasion on February 24.

After weeks of volunteering helping other displaced people in Lviv, he and Stoian ran out of money and decided to look for a job.

“I just got a job,” recalled Demchenko, a political science student. Paid the equivalent of $15 for a 12 hour ride.

Stoian, a digital entrepreneur and YouTuber, had another idea.

There is nothing to lose

Before the war, the two of them worked in a cafe in Bucha, one made coffee and the other made pies.

Stoian dreamed of selling her cakes in her hometown of Irpin, but she did not have the resources and was afraid of losing it.

“But we have nothing to lose now,” he said.

They opened the cafe because they didn’t have enough money to pay the rent and just buy the supplies. Scarcenamed after cat stoic left rear.

“Peoples Lviv it helps a lot. We He gave almost everything here”, commenting that a microwave and for donated oat milk cartons.

Their friend Daryna Mazur, 21, a math student, came to Poland after a short exile and is now helping them. “I was going to be a programmer, but I’m baking pies here.”

According to the UN, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine displaced more than 10 million people at home and abroad.

Many left with little more than a backpack or two, leaving their homes, belongings, pets and jobs.

Thousands died in the conflict and entire villages were devastated, including the villages where Stoian and Demchenko lived.

Second, he said he was lucky to have escaped before the Russian invasion of his town, Borodyanka.

His parents and 12-year-old sister managed to survive a week after him.

His office was destroyed, he said. No one from his family’s house knows how he was after the attack.

Stoian said he returned to Irpin, where he found his flat with no windows and no signs of someone tampering with it.

Kiit, your beloved cat has not appeared out of nowhere.

On the contrary, he was surprised to find a neighbor wearing one of his coats. You don’t know how you found it.

support the economy

But in the bustling center of Lviv, diners come to the counter and examine the menu next to a jug of daffodils.

Olga Milkhasieva came to make a wish with her husband Rostislav and their five-month-old son Maksym.

We just want to support these kids because we know what’s going on.” Young mother Olga also testified that she is a refugee from Kiev.

Elina, a 31-year-old banker from Lviv, who did not reveal her last name, said she had visited the city center for the first time since the start of the war.

“It’s really hard to drink coffee like nothing matters,” he admitted, smoking a cup.

She said she cried every day when she read the news on social media.

“But we understand that life goes on and we need to support business and the economy,” he said.