> However, since Ukraine's declaration of independence in 1991, [calling Ukraine "The Ukraine"] has become politicised and is now rarer, and style guides advise against its use. US ambassador William Taylor said that using "the Ukraine" implies disregard for Ukrainian sovereignty. The official Ukrainian position is that "the Ukraine" is incorrect, both grammatically and politically.
This is just wrong. If you search for the word Ukraine on the Russian government site kremlin.ru (there is an English-language version), you will find that this word is used there without the article. I am sure you'll get the same results if you search RT's web site.
The article isn't the Russians' doing, especially given that there aren't any articles in most Slavic languages, including Russian. It is a historical happenstance of the English language, probably back from the time when the name Ukraine was perceived as meaning borderland. People using it probably do so because they learnt the word decades ago.
"Ukraine" doesn't mean borderland, it's another Russian attitude with the aim to humiliate Ukrainian nation. You can also look at the map and see who is really a borderland of the civilized world.
This is an old and complicated argument. The Russians have their language. In that language, for several centuries, probably as long as the word Ukraine existed in it, it was governed by the preposition "на". There are other Russian toponyms that are governed by the same preposition — Cuba, Caucasus, Manhattan, "the West", Middle East, "the East", etc. It really is a question of whether the language should change because of a new political status of Ukraine (and therefore all its speakers should change their linguistic habits); or whether this word should continue to be among the exceptions that take the preposition "на".
The whole situation, in which people get annoyed about a grammatical factoid of another people's language is just... bizarre.
No. There is no need to change language. If in any given phrase one means Ukraine as a region, like Caucasus, then it is "на", if one means Ukraine as country then it is "в". With Ukraine becoming independent country most semantic contexts though from the "region context" have naturally become "country context".
The issue here is that Russians to intentionally demonstrate their unrecognition and disrespect to Ukraine use "на" (as in the "region context") when they really speak about Ukraine as a country and thus, by Russian language rules, must have used "в".
>The whole situation, in which people get annoyed about a grammatical factoid of another people's language is just... bizarre.
It isn't annoyance. It is tens (actually looks more like early hundred) of thousands people dead for the reason that that factoid demonstrate - Russian refusal to recognize Ukrainian right to exist and to exist independent of Russia.
There is no such semantic distinction between these two prepositions.
You speak of a human language as if it were a programming language disregarding its history (while even for programming languages, history is important, which is why javascript or php are in the state they are currently in). Just as no-one was thinking of the troubled American past when they were using the word "master" as a name of their default git branch or of the primary database, so no Russian (at least none that I am aware of) relies on the preposition "на" to tell them that something is or is not a country. They do, however, rely on their vocabulary of linguistic collocations, developed through the years of using the language, that tells them that the word "Ukraine" wants the preposition "на".
Were you bothered by the preposition "на"? Did you feel, back in secondary school, that saying "на Украине" somehow made it into something less than a country? Can you remember the time when it started bothering you?
And yes, we also use "na" for islands (Cuba, Manhattan) but it's still deprecating.
What happened when your country invaded Ukraine was that practically from Day 1, everyone in Poland switched to "w Ukrainie" - a preposition used normally for the country.
Edit: "w Ukrainie" instead of "w" to make it more clear what I mean
Which part isn't true?
There's an online corpus of the Russian language [0], whose entries of usage of the word Urkaine date back to the 17th century — you can easily see which preposition that word took throughout centuries. If you search through books on Russian grammar on Google Books, you will find examples specifically prescribing the preposition "на" throughout the 20th century.
The whole controversy about the preposition started somewhere around the year 2000, and quickly became political. For a disinterested Russian, who is not into politics, "на" would be a natural preposition to use with this word simply because he would have encountered it in classical literature, in the movies, or on TV. It was semantically charged only for those who were aware of the debate. The response from the linguists used to be that if Ukraine wants to use the preposition "в", it is free to do so for the Russian language spoken on its territory; but that it should have no say on how a language is used in another country.
I understand that in the recent years the usage of this preposition has become a political shibboleth; but I am not speaking about it from a political angle. My points are that the usage of this preposition, with this word, in Russian, is 1) historical, and 2) to those who aren't making a political statement, semantically neutral (i.e. it does not, in itself, connote derision, imperial ambitions, or anything of the kind). I have not made any claims about the Polish language (other than that, to my knowledge, it doesn't have articles).
[0] - https://ruscorpora.ru/
Wrong grammar is when you put the verb before the subject in English. The grammar does not decide whether you say "on a call" or "in a call".
Wrong grammar would be if you used an incorrect case after the preposition, but the very choice of it involves the speaker and what semantics or meaning is meant by them.
Okay - you would find "NA" in the Russian corpus from the 17th century - but it is totally meaningless because East Ukraine was annexed in 17th century by Russia. I would have bet that this particular preposition was preferred.
I don't think any books on Russian grammar recommend a specific preposition - most likely you meant some stylistic compendium, but the style is something more subjective and even political in nature, isn't it?
In a nutshell, it's not a grammatical or historical thing, it's just shameless linguistical colonialism in its purest form.
Surely, the main factor is that Russians disrespect everyone else too, including their own less lucky compatriots. Russia must be destroyed as a culture if they can't learn to behave as civilized humans, if they want to be enslavers only. Though, it looks like Putin is already succeeding in this task.
The world used to call Argentina "The Argentine," but that changed, too. There are a number of similar examples in the last hundred years or so.
Not everything is overnight, and your own link states that the change in terminology is both political, and recent. And while Wikipedia states the change was 1991, it's not like every person on the planet got a memo in the mail the next day letting them know what the new, approved, language is. For millions, it's still newish information.
It seems most Ukrainians agree that the worst would be to live under Russian dictatorship. Maybe they have experience in this area.
As far as conventional arms go: Russia has quite a few planes, tanks, and artillery; however, so long as the USA wills it, the Ukraine will have more anti-air missiles, more anti-tank munitions, and more long-range rockets.
In any long-range fight, being able to locate your enemy is key; the pentagons ability to identify the location of Russian positions appears to be unsurpassed. So long as they are passing this intel to the Ukraine, along with long-range weapons to act on it, any attempt at a Russian advance will be done without access to local command/supply posts.
Edit: suppose the old man has properly lost it.
If Putin drops a tactical nuke on a Ukranian military position, will Nato really respond in kind? Seems like damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.
It was a small but interesting news item, that a few days before the invasion, some of the US stealth bombers were moved to Rammstein air force base. So at any time there would be the capability of a forceful answer. But this also shows how ridiculous the claims were, that the NATO would seek to attack Russia, as that is the thing the NATO has tried hard to avoid so far.
Both countries can’t use nukes because the other has them too. India has a fast growing economy at stake and Pakistan may be an economic disaster but Pakistani elites have huge assets in the west which can be frozen.
Usage of nukes in the Indian subcontinent has easily calculable first order effects.
In Ukraine it’s entirely different. It is ridiculous to suggest that the US will welcome the destruction of the entire human race if Putin even nukes civilian centres in Ukraine. They won’t. But there are second and third order consequences of such actions which are not in favour of Russia and certainly not in favour of Putin and his friends.
The new Cold War will be sealed and it will be game over for his regime. He wants western apathy and social disorder to continue. And he wants a disaster zone in Ukraine as his personal entry point into Europe proper.
If that happens, US helps to Ukraine stops, period. I would expect Europe is left on its own and that may be a bad time for Ukraine and actually not only Ukraine.
I certainly hope all this is incorrect since I have family and life in Europe.
Just what Russians are waiting. HIMARS flying over Ukrainian border into Russia and Balarus. Get some other allies involved, declare it a WW3 as pretext to invade Baltics.
How does Russia plan to take the Baltics when they cannot even take a city less them 300km from their border in 6 months?.
I'm not sure what the western forces game plan is and i'm not sure they actually want to help Ukraine too much, I think they are walking the fine line of wanting to hurt Russia enough and see what happens, but they don't want to truly arm Ukraine because if Russia really loses, they might just nuke.
They could have done much more and given way more, why those are large numbers, it's still not on the scale truly needed to defeat Russia. They still hold back plenty.
They are obviously not going to say that directly in public, so public statements mean little.
All of this could change in a second if Pooty either messes with Moldavia/Poland/Baltics or uses um unconventional weapons. I would not consider measured responses to be an open invitation for silliness
The Ukraine needs a lot of that, more air defense (the German Gepards seem to work quite well) and of course some main battle tanks. There is no need for NATO troops to get directly involved as long as there is enough supply for the Ukraine (Poland still has a bunch of Mig 29 which could be immediately be used by the Ukraine).