It all started with a plate of borscht, the soup made from beetroot and white cabbage that is popular in Eastern Europe.

It is March 5, 2022, day nine of the war, when a picture of this soup is posted on Instagram with the hashtag CookforUkraine.

"It felt so urgent," Alissa Timoshkina and Olia Hercules explain.

"We knew we had a strong message."

It's a bit cliché, "but borscht is a really fascinating dish.

There are so many different flavors of it,” says Timoshkina, a Russian-born chef and author who has lived in England for more than 20 years.

Together with her student friend Hercules, who is from Ukraine and is also a chef and author of several cookbooks, she therefore launched the social media initiative CookforUkraine.

Vareniki, Golubtsi and Syrniki

Until recently, borscht was a simple soup, a highly down-to-earth dish with thousands of recipes and at least as many family anecdotes.

Well, through the work of the two activists, this simple soup has become a kind of symbol for cohesion and peace.

And then there is a Russian and a Ukrainian, of all people, who are cooking up a fight against the war: Within a short time, people in Ukraine and beyond followed the call of the two women, posting pictures of homemade Wareniki - crescent-shaped dumplings - and Golubtsi, Ukrainian stuffed cabbage.

Quark pancakes and blue and yellow decorated biscuits called Syrniki.

“I can talk about borscht forever”

In order to collect donations, amateur cooks are now organizing soup and cake sales.

Restaurants sell traditional dishes for a good cause.

The British cult chef Yotam Ottolenghi hosted the charity event in his London test kitchen, and his colleague Jamie Oliver made pampushki for his followers – Ukrainian yeast bread stuffed with garlic.

To date, the equivalent of almost 550,000 euros has been collected on the initiative's donations page.

The money goes to the children's aid network Unicef.

Cooking support for Ukraine is also coming from other parts of the world: buckwheat blinis from the USA, Ukrainian yeast buns from Bulgaria, filled Cheburek flatbreads from Australia.

And again and again: the beetroot soup borscht.

"It's probably the only dish that most people know when they think of Eastern European cuisine," says initiator Timoshkina and laughs.

It's one of the few moments in the conversation when the tension of the past few weeks melts away: "I can talk about borscht forever and eat borscht all the time and never get enough of it."

Eating habits do not stop at national borders

A few years ago, when the conflict between Ukraine and Russia was already in full swing, a dispute broke out over who invented borscht.

Ukraine wanted to have it recognized as intangible cultural heritage, Russia protested.

Above all, the soup shows one thing: how closely interwoven the history of the two countries is.

The food culture also stems from this common history, says Timoshkina.

So what characterizes Ukrainian cuisine?

“Sometimes I find it difficult to answer that Ukrainian and Russian cuisines are very similar at a time when people are giving their lives to define their national sovereignty to show that they are not part of Russia. At the same time, it is important to remain objective and true to history.

Many families have both Russian and Ukrainian ancestry, including those of Olia Hercules and Alissa Timoshkina.

They grew up eating Russian and Ukrainian dishes, as borscht, vareniki and pelmeni are cooked in kitchens on both sides of the border.

But what Hercules' grandmother served as green borscht – made with sorrel and spring herbs – was called sorrel soup in Timoshkina's family.