“What is it like to be Ukrainian?” — my foreign friend once asked me.
“If you really want to know what it is like to be Ukrainian, you have to see it for yourself”.
“How can I do it?” — he asked me a little disappointed.
“Let’s go. I will show you what exactly you need to know”.
If you’re reading this, you must have heard about the traditional Ukrainian dish – borscht (soup made of beetroot that gives it the bright red colour). This dish is the essential part of the Ukrainian nation and heritage. It is the main theme during many festivals and cultural events. The recipe varies from region to region and from family to family. You can make it with meat or try to cook a vegetarian one, you can eat it with sour cream, salo (fat), bread and garlic or eat it light.
Actually, it doesn’t matter how you cook it, it’s important how you treat it. A famous Ukrainian chief Ievgen Klopotenko after making a film interviewing different families about their borscht recipes said: “It felt as if borscht was not just a dish for them, it was deep love, respect and cooking passion”. However, a lot of people abroad knew borscht as a Russian dish and that made Ievgen fight for borscht to be known as the Ukrainian traditional dish but not Russian.
This battle over the borscht between Ukraine and Russia had been going on for decades, if not centuries. The last strike was made by Ievgen Klopotenko and his team. It took them 2 years of hard cultural and diplomatic work and on the 1st of July 2022 UNESCO officially added borscht on UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage List.
You ask me what it is like to be Ukrainian, so the answer is to never give up, to be strong, to fight for your freedom, future and culture, to respect your nation and to be proud of being Ukrainian, and the last but not the least is to love Ukraine!
by Maryna Syniak
