UNESCO, the UN’s cultural agency, has registered “Ukrainian borscht,” the beet-based soup, as part of Ukraine’s “intangible cultural heritage in need of urgent safeguarding,” a move that Ukraine’s culture minister lauded as “victory in the borscht war.”
The culture of Ukrainian borscht cooking “was today inscribed on UNESCO’s list of intangible cultural heritage in need of urgent safeguarding” by a UNESCO committee, the agency said in a July 1 statement.
UNESCO acknowledged that Ukrainian borscht is a “national version of borscht consumed in several countries of the region.”
“An inscription of an element of intangible cultural heritage…does not imply exclusivity, nor ownership, of the heritage concerned,” the UNESCO statement said.
SEE ALSO: Not Just Soup: Ukraine Seeks 'Cultural Heritage' Listing For BorschtThe decision was approved after a fast-track process prompted by Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the "negative impact on this tradition" caused by the war, UNESCO said in a statement on July 1.
"Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, UNESCO has initiated a series of emergency measures in the fields of culture, education, as well as the protection of journalists, in accordance with UNESCO's mandate," UNESCO added.
Ukrainian Culture Minister Oleksandr Tkachenko hailed UNESCO's move, calling it Ukraine’s "victory in the borscht war."
"And remember and be sure that we will win both in the war of borscht and in this war," he said, referring to Russia's invasion.
In a post on Twitter, the Russian Embassy in the United States noted that borscht “is a national food of many countries, including Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Poland, Romania, Moldova, and Lithuania.”
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote on Facebook that “our borscht doesn’t need to be defended and is subject to immediate and complete destruction in the bowl.”
She noted that dishes like humus and pilaf have been declared “national dishes” of multiple nations, but said Kyiv thinks “everything is subject to Ukrainization.”
“What will be next?” she wrote. “The claim that pork is a ‘Ukrainian national product’?”
Ukraine’s application for the UNESCO designation was pushed by the Institute of Culture of Ukraine, a nongovernmental organization founded by chef Yevhen Klopotenko. In a 2020 post on Facebook, Klopotenko said the designation was necessary because of claims borscht is “a Russian soup.”
“It’s about national identity,” Klopotenko wrote.