‘I lived in Russia for ‘14 f*****g years!’ Guardian’s DILL expert totally sure what’s in a BORSCH

Twitter is the go-to place for journalists to debate policies, gain followers and clash with opponents from other political camps. Some even use it to post epic-length threads outlining future books. But the microblogging service is also a good place to share little episodes that shape a person’s life experience in a foreign country.

Shaun Walker, who covers Eastern Europe for the British newspaper Guardian, shared such a tidbit on Sunday, complaining how his rest after a long day of reporting on the Ukrainian presidential election was undermined by a local restaurant. He posted a picture of a borsch served with dill despite opting out of it.

The post sparked a lively discussion. Some commenters doubted Walker’s identification of the herb.

Others called him out for the culinary heresy of asking for borsch without dill or asking why the obligatory addition of sour cream was missing.

Walker had a few harsh words for the doubters though.

RT’s borsch expert panel has to agree with our British college. From what we can see, that was indeed a mixture of dill and parsley floating on his soup. After all, who is a better authority on the matter than a man who literally wrote a report on how dill can ruin any dish.

Meanwhile a small minority of commenters took issue not with Walker’s botanical knowledge but with his command of the English language.

Nationalist-minded Ukrainians may insist that the name of their capital should be spelled “Kyiv” mimicking how it sounds in Ukrainian. But last time we checked, the Oxford English Dictionary mentioned this spelling as a side note, not the primary variant.

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