Ukraine won the "war for borscht": UNESCO recognized borscht as a Ukrainian dish, including it in the list of "cultural heritage sites that require urgent protection." This was announced by the Minister of Culture of Ukraine Oleksandr Tkachenko on his Facebook page.

“Victory in the war for borscht is ours! (...) The battle for borscht was started even before the war. And no matter how much Masha Zakharova says that “cooking books were forbidden, but the recipe was kept secret and forbidden to be cooked” and Ukrainian borscht in general is “a manifestation of extremism and Nazism”, now it is officially Ukrainian and officially under the protection of UNESCO. But remember and be sure that both in the war for borscht and in this war we will win.”

In 2021, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine submitted for consideration by UNESCO a dossier on the inclusion of the element "Culture of cooking Ukrainian borscht" in the list of the intangible cultural heritage of mankind. The nomination was supposed to be considered in 2023, but “the fighting in Ukraine created a threat to borscht,” so the site urgently needs protection.

In April, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that Ukraine does not want to "share borscht", which is "xenophobia, Nazism and extremism."

"Why? Because it was impossible to share borscht, well, you can’t, it should belong only to one person. That's just one people, one nationality. And so that it is common, so that in every city or every region every housewife can cook it in her own way - no. They don't want to compromise. So this is what we are talking about – xenophobia, Nazism, extremism in all forms.”