One of the differences between Russians and Ukrainians is that the former think borscht is soup while the latter know it’s a philosophy of existence. You can find out a lot about people based on how they make and eat their borscht.
People who come from the Ukrainian countryside, put salo in their borscht. They do hard physical labor, and need to raise the caloric content of borscht because this will be their entire meal. When people move from the countryside to a city, they drop salo from their borscht.
Ukrainians who are poor and whose borscht ends up being too thin, eat it with a very hot red pepper to mask the lack of flavor.
Russians who are poor use a different money-saving approach. They skip the step of sautéing their vegetables in sunflower oil and just dump them raw into the stock instead. For a Ukrainian, however, it’s unimaginable that borscht can be disrespected this way.
Jewish Ukrainians like to accompany their borscht with a kotleta, instead of a slice of bread.
And I always accompany it with radishes because I’m addicted to radishes and eat them 5 times a day.
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