A Unesco battle for borscht
The current iteration of the borscht battles properly began in 2019, when the Russian foreign ministry tweeted that the soup was one of Russia’s “most famous and beloved dishes”.
It led to Ukrainian chef Ievgen Klopotenko beginning a campaign to get Ukrainian borscht recognised by Unesco.
On what grounds?
Well according to two women who are writing a book about borscht, the soup really did make its way to Russia from Ukraine. The Financial Times’ recent piece (paywall) on borscht quotes Marianna Dushar is a Fulbright scholar studying food history and sociology in the Ukrainian diaspora in the US and Aurora Ogorodnyk, a food writer and researcher, who works for Ukraine’s largest supermarket chain.
Borscht is one of Russia’s “most famous and beloved dishes” — Tweet from Russian foreign ministry in 2019
Ms Dushar says that in old Russian culinary literature, borscht is usually referred to as being from Ukraine, “even though they…
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