Belarusian border guards have started broadcasting an audio clip about borscht across the border with Ukraine.
From loudspeakers turned towards Ukraine, lyrical music and a pleasant female voice say the following text in Ukrainian:
Comrades Ukrainian border guards! Do not forget that Ukrainian and Belarusian borscht are very similar. Of course, there are slight differences. Beans are usually added to Ukrainian borsch, and Belarusian borsch has more potatoes. But nevertheless both sides are almost the same borsch. Ukrainian and Belarusian borsch are borsch-neighbours and borsch-relatives.
In European cuisine there is no dish that even remotely resembles borsch. That is why borsch is not only tasty and healthy, but it is one of the principles of our general East Slavic identity. Borsch is something that unites us. Remember about it, comrades. When you have nothing to cook your borsch out of, you should come to our side, try our Belarusian borsch. You will not regret”.
This is not the first episode of the Belarusian-Ukrainian “border war”. Ukrainian border guards constantly make indecent antics, often while drunk and drugged on the Belarusian border. They show aggressive and obscene gestures, write offensive inscriptions on the roads, distribute leaflets with some kind of appeals, shine lasers on video cameras, install camera traps for the units, damage the infrastructure, and make threatening calls to the posts.
In March, Ukrainians installed a gallows with a mannequin in a Russian army uniform on the border. Ukrainian border guards called him Valera and claimed he was the real corpse of a Russian soldier killed near Kiev. The Ukrainians later posted a Belarusian nationalist flag at a border crossing point in Zhytomyr region.
In response, a board with a silhouette of the soldier against the background of an American flag and an inscription in Ukrainian appeared on the Belarusian side:
We will help Ukraine find the real occupiers”.
Another board had a photo of the Great Patriotic War and the inscription “Belarus Remembers”.