@chessprimus said in #1:
> He demanded ever since a new security structure for the whole of Europe and a solution of existing problems in the Ukraine concerning the russian minorities in the eastern parts of the country.
Such alleged problems are just a means for Putin and Russian propaganda to justify their illegal war of aggression against Ukraine. These made up stories of Russian no longer being taught in Ukrainian schools (contrary to Russian propaganda it was at least until February 2022) and the like clearly fail to give a sufficient casus belli. But that doesn't stop Putin from making a lame attempt anyways.
Furthermore it's not in "the Ukraine". It's simply in Ukraine. I'm not your English teacher, but this is point about politics, not about grammar. Well, about both actually:
The use of an article indicates that you're talking about a region with amorphous (or ambiguous) borders inside a larger sovereign nation, not an independent country (with inviolable, clearly defined borders) itself.
You are thus echoing Putin's imperialistic, irredentist rhetoric.
Sovereign states like Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Poland, Moldova, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Czechia, Bulgaria, Serbia, etc. are simply called by their respective name without the use of a definite article. When something happens in Prague, it happened in Czechia, not "in the Czechia". When something happens in Samarqand, it happened in Uzbekistan, not "in the Uzbekistan". And when something happens in Vladivostok, it happened in Russia, not "in the Russia".
The only exceptions to this rule are country names which are either plural (e.g. "The Netherlands", Dutch: "Nederland", without definite article) or contain nouns that require a definite article (like "republic", "Kingdom", "states", "union") that usually refer to the fact that the sovereign nation came about by a union of several nations or states.
For example "The Czech republic" (Czechia), "The United Kingdom of Great-Britain and Northern Ireland" (Britain), "The United States of America" (U.S.A.), "The Soviet Union" (CCCP) or "The United Arab Emirates" (UAE)
When the people of Ukraine were still governed (or starved to death in Holodomor) by the Soviet Union (1922-1991) the Soviets (and international English speaking news outlets) referred to the Ukrainian SSR simply as "the Ukraine". You can verify this by watching old, English language TV programs about the Chernobyl disaster (1986). You can hear them refer to "the Ukraine" and the nuclear power plant "in the Ukraine", because Ukraine wasn't an independent nation at the time but rather a region inside the CCCP. At least in the eyes of Stalin.
Examples for the use of the definite article for regions that are part of a sovereign nation include:
"Marseille, in the Bouches-du-Rhône, has an average of 59 days of rain a year."
"In the Deep South the climate is typically a lot warmer than in the Pacific Northwest."
"The development of wind farms in the High Plains (subregion of the Great Plains, mainly in the Western United States) is one of the newest areas of economic development."
"Before World War II, the cities in the Rust Belt region were among the largest in the United States."
"Last week I was in the Bluegrass region."
"The abundance of southern facing slopes in the Vallée de la Marne produces the ripest wines with full aroma."
"Some vineyards in the Champagne wine region have a very long tradition."
"Some of the world's finest beaches can be found in the Caribbean."
"According to a 2009 proposition of the Regional Committee for local government reform the Oise would have been incorporated in the Île-de-France, the Somme would have been incorporated in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais and Aisne would have been incorporated in the Champagne-Ardenne in order to reduce the number of French regions."
There is a very similar construction going on in the Russian language, so continuing to use the article "the" further cements your view that Ukraine should not be an independent country (even though it had its sovereignty guaranteed by the Russian Federation in 1994:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum). Or even worse, that Ukraine has no right to exist in the first place, as Putin would have it:
theconversation.com/its-ukraine-not-the-ukraine-heres-why-178748I for one condemn irredentism. It disgusts me.