[colechristensen]

France is officially the French Republic, Mexico the United Mexican States, in those cases grammatically “the” is appropriate there.

Alone “Mexico”, “France”, or “America” don’t get a “the” because grammatically it isn’t appropriate.

Ukraine can because the word in local language has a common meaning, something like “borderlands” so it does work, but they ask nicely that you don’t.

[azinman2]

We’re not discussing the local language, we’re discussing the English language.

If you add the type of government, then you use the. Mexico alone doesn’t use it, much like Ukraine doesn’t specify the type of government so it’s omitted.