There is only one correct Ukrainian borscht; there are countless ways to make it.

It sounds like doublespeak, language belonging in a satire of a former Soviet republic beset by corruption and charged by conflict. Images of protesters on the EuroMaidan in Kyiv eating bowls of borscht (or borshch, as most Ukrainians spell it), however, prompt the question: Can a pot of soup contain, along with the requisite beets, clues about the character of a country — and a crisis?

As Russia makes claims on Ukrainian territory, it might also be said that it has long made claims on its cuisine. But if the current crisis can be traced directly to the events of last November, the exact genesis of borscht is impossible to discern. In “Please to the Table,” their compendious 1990 cookbook, coauthors Anya von Bremzen and John Welchman explained that borscht is eaten and beloved broadly throughout Eastern Europe, but “its strongest associations are with the Ukraine, where it’s thought to have originated back in the 14th century.”

In its many forms, borscht is hearty stuff; this is true of the soup both as a source of sustenance and as a cultural signifier. By email, Natalie Kononenko, a professor of Ukrainian ethnography at the University of Alberta (according to the 2006 census, the Canadian province has more than 300,000 residents of Ukrainian descent), attested to the great cultural weight that borscht bears.

“This is a topic that, in its own way, is about as controversial as the question of whether ‘Kyivan Rus’” — the medieval federation of East Slavic tribes, whose capital was Kyiv — “was the beginning of the Ukrainian state or the Russian state,” she wrote. “Some people claim that borshch is a Ukrainian national dish and others claim that is a Russian national dish.”