It's Ukraine not the Ukraine. Nobody calls Finland "the Finland".

There is language culture and there are politicized words (like the names on a political map). The politicization of the name will take some time to alter language culture; I doubt antagonizing is going to help.

If The Netherlands were to have dropped the definite article thirty years ago, I think English language cultures would still get caught up with "the".

Does it bother you that we say "Munich" and "Cologne" and that the French say "Londres" (I don't think these names have been politicized in English)?

> If The Netherlands were to have dropped the definite article thirty years ago, I think English language cultures would still get caught up with "the".

But that's not what happened here and that's clear by the commenter returning to make a mockery of how to pronounce Kyiv. This isn't an accidental drop of the definite article: it's an intentional attempt to "dehumanize" (if there is a better word for what I'm attempting to convey here please chime in) by language. If you know the history of where "the Ukraine" comes from, you'd understand the use of the definite article here as a cudgel.

The better comparison for what the commenter is doing is the equivalence of dead naming transgender people but for states.

No one is antagonizing more than the commenter here.

> If The Netherlands were to have dropped the definite article thirty years ago...

>> But that's not what happened here

It is, isn't it? In 1991 it became Ukraine. I don't recall even being aware of the issue around the definite article until after the Russian invasion, sorry. But throughout my childhood when it was part of the USSR, it was "The Ukraine". These ingrained speech patterns are very hard to change on a dime, hence my comments about the slowness to change a language culture.

People get irritated with antagonistic correction, and you'll probably only succeed in cementing resistance to change that way, especially when no slight was originally intended. If you could read minds then maybe you're entitled to declare the poster's intent was to "dehumanize".

The first time I heard an English-speaker use a new pronunciation for Ukraine's capital, it was from a SW engineering manager that just returned from a visit there and had the whiff of some idiot returning from vacation in Mexico who henceforth insisted on saying "Mehico".

I'm using my own ignorance as an example of why you can't simply impute malice or an urge to "dehumanize". I'm also suggesting that your tactic is simply counterproductive.

I'll let you have the last word.

Do they call America “The United States?”

And now it's Keeev too. I know, I know. Still not doing the needful, bot.