The soup that launched a thousand arguments

In 2022, UNESCO inscribed Ukrainian borscht on its list of intangible cultural heritage in need of urgent safeguarding. The decision was framed as a response to the war, and it was immediately, predictably, contentious.

Russian media called it cultural theft. Ukrainian commentators called it overdue recognition. My Russian-speaking Ukrainian grandmother, who had been making borscht every Sunday for sixty years, called it "nonsense" and went back to chopping beetroot.

Every family's borscht is the correct borscht. This is the only culinary truth I am prepared to defend.

The recipe as battlefield

The borscht debate is, of course, not really about soup. It is about who gets to claim a shared cultural inheritance when the sharing has become impossible.

  • Ukrainian position: Borscht originates in Ukrainian culinary tradition; Russian claims are colonial appropriation
  • Russian position: Borscht belongs to a shared Slavic heritage; nationalising it is absurd
  • Diaspora position: Can we just eat?

At the table

In Berlin, London, and Tbilisi, diaspora kitchens are quietly resolving what diplomats cannot. Russian and Ukrainian cooks share market stalls at community events. Recipes circulate on Telegram without national labels.

The table, it turns out, is more generous than the map.