Powerful photos show empty grocery store shelves in Kyiv

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is taking a toll on people’s daily necessities of life, prompting the nation's citizens to try to scurry to safety.

A freelance journalist in the capital city of Kyiv tweeted photos of empty shelves at a grocery store on Friday.

“Grocery shops today. Never have I ever seen anything like that in Kyiv,” Tanya Kozyreva captioned the photos of empty shelves and refrigerators. “Triggers the worst possible scenario in my head. Famine is something Ukraine had experienced twice already.”

Kozyreva tweeted that the photos were taken in Kyiv at a Silpo, a Ukrainian grocery store, by citizen Yulia Sinkevych.

In response to the original tweet, another person said their mother sent them a similar picture, of empty grocery store shelves and baskets, from Kyiv's Left Bank. "They were waiting for bread to be baked," they wrote.

Food shortages could be yet another obstacle facing residents of Ukraine's capital city, many of whom have taken shelter in subway stations.

As referenced in Kozyreva's tweet, the country has previously endured starvation between 1932 and 1933, when Soviet leader Joseph Stalin oversaw the country's agricultural production. That led to a famine called Holodomor, which is "a combination of the Ukrainian words for 'starvation' and 'to inflict death.'" That led to the death of more than 7 million people.