Rachael Ray breaks down in tears over visits to war-torn Ukraine

Rachael Ray broke down in tears over her emotional visits to war-torn Ukraine during a new interview on Entertainment Tonight on Thursday.

The celebrity chef, 54, who has made three visits to Ukraine, became visibly emotional as she reflected on the ‘strength and bravery’ of the Ukrainian people, and recounted how she cooked for them.

Ray’s most recent trip to Ukraine saw her travel to Lviv, the country’s seventh largest city, with the star saying: ‘Every trip that I make there – this was my third – is just filled with so much emotion.

‘I’ve never met stronger or more braver people at every age, children to grandparents. These are just the most strong, resilient, brilliant, loving people, and it’s hard to be there because you see the ruins of war. 

Tears: Rachael Ray broke down in tears over her emotional visits to war-torn Ukraine during a new interview on Entertainment Tonight on Thursday

‘You see the amputated limbs and you see face to face and look them eye to eye, people who are displaced. All they want to be is free and free and fair elections and govern themselves and have normal lives and great professions and great lives.

‘And now they have nothing. Their lives are reduced to the contents of plastic bags, and the lucky ones have a suitcase or two and they drag them miles to get to a safer border, to a safe haven or just to the hospital.” 

‘It’s very emotional. I love it more than anything in the world. It gives me purpose. It fills my heart. And I have wonderful food there and I have a wonderful life among the Ukrainian people, but then I come home and I’m so haunted with their suffering and their pain and I just can’t not be with them. 

‘So, every trip I take is always about what do we need to do when we come back. It never even occurs to me not to go back.’

Heartbreaking: The celebrity chef, 54, who has made three visits to Ukraine, became visibly emotional as she reflected on the ‘strength and bravery’ of the Ukrainian people, and recounted how she cooked for them (pictured scenes from Rachael’s documentary)

The star reflected on teaching classes in a kitchen she built at St. John Bosco Orphanage – and the moment she cooked beef borsht and chocolate cake for children whose parents had been killed in the war.

She said; ‘The chocolate cakes exploded because there was too much batter for the mixer. And the children were eating it off the counters and off the side of the bowls. 

‘It was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. It was like Christmas. It was better than Christmas.’

‘I just felt, wow, this is great. They’ve lost so much, they’ve lost mom and dad, they’ve lost their homes, but look at the joy that they can still feel and how much they love each other.

‘And they were all hugging each other and sharing and trading toys. They weren’t fighting each other. They were sharing and trading and I thought, what exemplary kids. What beautiful little creatures these people are.’

Devastating: The star reflected on teaching classes in a kitchen she built at St. John Bosco Orphanage – and the moment she cooked beef borsht and chocolate cake for children whose parents had been killed in the war

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She added: ‘This is a magic, magic place It’s an orphanage but it’s also a school. It’s also their house of worship, of course, and it’s a vocational training center. 

‘They have five different programs for kids and I built out the kitchen with my friend, Giancarlo. We order this stuff through Italy because it was easier to get it from the EU into Ukraine than from America. 

‘We upgraded all the electricity so it could handle it. We built out the kitchen with induction stoves ’cause that was the easiest option, and we had to upgrade the electricity to do that, and then we upgraded the ventilation so we could all cook together.

Opening up on the work she and her team do for Ukraine, she said: ‘One of the things we do on every trip is provide these frontline kits that are made to NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] standards for tourniquets.

Cooking: She said; ‘The chocolate cakes exploded because there was too much batter for the mixer. And the children were eating it off the counters and off the side of the bowls. ‘It was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen’

’17  elements in all. I think the most important element is the gel you put below a tourniquet wherever you were injured. If you have shrapnel, if you were in a missile attack, if you were shot, you would put the tourniquets on first and then you put this gel on to keep enough blood going to the injured part of your body so you won’t lose that limb or maybe that organ. It buys you a little bit of time.

‘The places where you put together materials for people – people that are being trained civilians that are now fighters – these particular safety kits, these things have to move all the time or they are military targets for the Russians. So, it really is working in safe houses. 

‘You have to move that facility every few weeks where you build these kits and work. It is an abandoned place. It’s a cold, empty warehouse that you work in, where you process those types of materials.’

Ray’s special on her trip to Ukraine airs Thursday on The Rachael Ray Show.

Ray has previously said of her decision to visit Ukraine: The simple response is that I could not look away, and I could not just watch’