In Google Translate (English to Russian), "Ukraine" and "the Ukraine" both give the same result, namely "Украины". Not surprising, given Russian lacks the definite article "the".
However, "the Outskirts" translates to "окраины", which when pronounced, sounds very close to "Украины". "Uh cra eena" vs "Oo cra eena".
Translating Russian to English involves interpolating articles, definite and indefinite. I now have an inkling of how this controversy arose.
There's actually an equivalent of the distinction between "Ukraine" and "The Ukraine" in Russian. As you rightly note, it doesn't have the definite article, but the distinction does show up in prepositions instead.
In Russian, when you speak of a named geographic region, the preposition for "in" (as in "10 million people live in ...") is used - in Russian, it's "v". On the other hand, if it's not a name, but rather a descriptive designation like "borderlands", then the preposition for "on" is used - in Russian, it's "na".
So, English "in Ukraine" becomes "v Ukraine". But English "in the Ukraine" becomes "na Ukraine". In modern Russian, both are considered acceptable, but the latter is generally considered normative, and is what most people use. Needless to say, Ukrainians strongly prefer "v", even when speaking Russian (it's unconditionally "v" in Ukrainian, where the same distinction exists). This is a regular cause of flames and edit wars on the Net between Russian and Ukrainian users.
> In Russian, when you speak of a named geographic region, the preposition for "in" (as in "10 million people live in ...") is used - in Russian, it's "v". On the other hand, if it's not a name, but rather a descriptive designation like "borderlands", then the preposition for "on" is used - in Russian, it's "na".
Except that there is no "rule" for that, other than established use, and even that is not consistent. People who insist on "na Ukraine" would somehow never say "na Serbskoi Kraine" or "na Khabarovskom Krae".
There actually is a russian phrase "на чужбине", "на чужой земле" (in a foreign land) where "на" is used when talking about another country. I guess using different prepositions is something historical, so "на" is not used anymore, but it is left in some set phrases.
In natural languages, established use is what defines rules, more or less. This particular one is not very consistent, I agree. Nevertheless, "na" is normative for a bunch of country names.
Personally, I use "v Ukraine", if only because it's a middle finger to the Kremlin. But I also don't think that the use of "na" necessarily denotes disrespect, or that people should be told how to properly speak their language.
I guess the nearest abstract equivalent to this would be the debate over gender-neutral pronouns like "xe" in English. You have one side laying arguments (many of them pretty good) as to why having such a thing is a good idea; and the other side pointing out that it just feels awkward and non-English-like.
I think I'd rather learn Kazakh using Latin letters than Irish with it's séimhiú system that h really is hard to grasp (I'm attempting to self learn it as a hobby).
I wish there were accents not just fada it would seem more intuitive hey maybe Irish would be better written in Cyrillic. Maybe there should be a Celtic alphabet just for Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Manx, Cornish, Breton.
However, "the Outskirts" translates to "окраины", which when pronounced, sounds very close to "Украины". "Uh cra eena" vs "Oo cra eena".
Translating Russian to English involves interpolating articles, definite and indefinite. I now have an inkling of how this controversy arose.