The title of this thread is "The War in the Ukraine" (emphasis mine).
Unfortunately, there is a politically meaningful distinction between the terms "Ukraine" and "the Ukraine". The latter term was widespread throughout the era of the Soviet Union and remains commonly used in Russia today. It suggests that Ukraine is an amorphous region within a broader polity, in the way that one might speak of "the Caucasus", "the Sahara" or "the Pacific Northwest", rather than a clearly defined entity such as "[The State of] Florida" or "Fujian province". The Ukrainian government has formally stated that the appropriate term in English is "Ukraine", not "the Ukraine". Use of "the Ukraine" can be interpreted as endorsing Moscow's view of Ukraine as being something less than a sovereign state. While in most contexts this may pass without comment, in the context of a war between Russia and Ukraine, the "the" becomes a distinctly partisan term that undermines what one assumes is the goal of a politically neutral discussion.
I don't wish to make life more difficult for SDF's moderators than it already is, nor to indulge in "political correctness" for the sake of it, however I do think that this distinction, while in some sense trivial, is nonetheless fundamental to the discussion at hand.
