Racket wrote:
Racket wrote:
Pretty sure the article has been deprecated over the past 20 years and I believe (as I posted in another thread) that using the article is to suggest that Ukraine is still a Russian/Soviet territory in the same way the US would call farm belt states "the Midwest." So a Ukrainian might take offense to it.
Found a source :
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/03/25/ukraine-or-the-ukraine-its-more-controversial-than-you-think/
Found another source :
https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2016/02/17/lets-call-ukraine-by-its-proper-name/#c38f9a954062Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Ukrainian government declared in its constitution that it would hence forth be referred to as “Ukraine,” thus dropping the article. There were two justifications for this. First, in Russian and Ukrainian, the two most popularly spoken languages in Ukraine, articles do not exist, hence it seemed foolish to incorporate the article. Second, with the establishment of its independence, “the Ukraine” became a demeaning term, as it implied that Ukraine remained a territorial region of one of its former rulers