On August 7, 2026, representatives of the Patriarchal Humanitarian Mission held a working meeting with the leadership of the Rus Food Foundation at the Synodal Department for Church Charity and Social Service in Moscow. The parties discussed the expansion of cooperation in helping those in need, holding joint actions and the current humanitarian situation in the regions of Donbass and Novorossiya.
Deacon Igor Kulikov, Director of the Patriarchal Humanitarian Mission, Head of the Department of Social Service of the Synodal Department of Charity, heads of the main areas of work of the Patriarchal Humanitarian Mission and curators of church social service in the federal districts of the Synodal Department of Charity took part in the negotiations.
On the part of the Rus Food Foundation, Julia Nazarova, co-founder of the Rus Food Bank Charitable Foundation, Executive Director of the Russian Cross Charitable Foundation, Yulia Minina, Head of the Regional Development Department, and Mikhail Kosmachev, Deputy Head of the department.
At the meeting, Yulia Nazarova presented the current structure of the funds and spoke about key charitable projects. She stressed that cooperation with the Russian Orthodox Church is a strategic direction in the organization's work.
"Working together with dioceses and parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church in the charitable transfer of food to people in need is a top priority in our work," said Yulia Nazarova. "Thanks to Orthodox churches and church NGOs, together we manage to transfer humanitarian food packages across the country as quickly as possible to those who really need them in the first place."
Mikhail Kosmachev made a presentation on the foundation's cooperation with church organizations throughout the country over the past year.
During the meeting, the participants discussed in detail the implementation of joint charity events, including the "Basket of Kindness", retail food-sharing projects and targeted assistance to private applicants.
Special attention was paid to plans to expand the geography of cooperation. Together with the curators of the Synodal Department for Charity, the regions where the Rus food bank has donors of products were analyzed, and ways to enhance cooperation with local dioceses were outlined.
Deacon Igor Kulikov thanked the leadership of the Food Foundation for their long-term cooperation. "For all the 14 years that the Rus Food bank has been in existence, it has been one of our most important partners in helping people in need," stressed Deacon Igor Kulikov. "For some diocesan social departments, for many years it has been the main supplier of products that are an important help for low—income families and single elderly people."
One of the key topics of the meeting was assistance to residents of the conflict zone. Father Igor noted that the most difficult humanitarian situation is currently developing in these regions. Residents of thousands of localities are suffering due to disrupted logistics, lack of food supplies and downtime of local industries. Employees and volunteers of the Patriarchal Humanitarian Mission have been providing assistance to injured civilians on a daily basis for more than four years. Thanks to the efforts of representatives of the Special Humanitarian Center of the Crimean Metropolis and the Marfo-Mariinsky Sisterhood of the Belgorod Diocese, aid is sometimes delivered even to those shelled villages of the Kherson and Belgorod regions, where other charitable organizations have not visited for a long time.
"More than 4.4 thousand tons of humanitarian aid have already been delivered and handed over to the most needy residents of Donbass and the border regions," Deacon Igor Kulikov said. — In this volume, there are also products transferred to us by the Rus Food bank together with the all-Russian public movement People's Front. In the near future, we are preparing to open new assistance centers for the Patriarchal Humanitarian Mission, which means an increase in the total amount of necessary assistance."