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by Secretmapper 1569 days ago
No, the US is not particularly offensive. 'The Ukraine' specifically is offensive, because it is how Russia calls Ukraine, (kinda like implying it's The Ukraine of Russia)
3 comments

>>...it is how Russia calls Ukraine

But the russian language doesn't have definite articles, right? So is that how Russia calls Ukraine in international announcements and such? Do they even translate their messages to English themselves? I thought it was all in Russian and we translated

If it's not that, what would be the equivalent of the definite article in russian? Maybe it's some other grammatical element that implies the same thing or something similar?

This is actually kind of interesting from a linguistic perspective. I never knew definite article could such meanings in english

> 'The Ukraine' specifically is offensive, because it is how Russia calls Ukraine

But that's not even something it's possible to say in Russian. They couldn't say "the Ukraine" if they wanted to.

or just as a territory e.g the Balkans