I still call it Kiev because all the TV people switching words on a dime freaked me out. It’s real shit when the entire media class just decides for geopolitical reasons the geographic name for a place everyone was used to using isn’t usable anymore.

When the media says or implies that Russian culture doesn’t belong in Ukraine, don’t take it as a statement of fact, take it as a statement of intent. They’re priming people to accept ethnic cleansing.

It’s like the whole “Ukraine” vs “the Ukraine” in English that the media did the same thing for. Russian and Ukrainian don’t have definite articles. There is no such thing as “the” in either language. The thing they argue over between Russian and Ukrainian is what preposition to use when talking about something in the territory of Ukraine saying ‘на украине’ (~“na ookrayeenye”) versus ‘в украине’ (~“v ookrayeenye”) meaning essentially “on Ukraine” vs “in Ukraine.”

Presumed to be a legacy of an assumed origin of the name Ukraine coming from

• ‘у’ particle/prefix in certain contexts meaning kind of by/at/of/near
• and край (~“krai” similar to English “cry”) in contexts meaning ‘ridge/edge/side,’ with its adjective form крайний (~krainee) meaning ‘outermost’

so Украина (“Ookrayeenah”) under this assumed origin meaning something akin to ‘of the outer-edge (of the Russian empire)’ kind of like “borderland.” It is common place especially with older generations to use на украине instead of в украине, though it also often both get used interchangeably.

That’s its own whole mess of history, but US English doesn’t have, at all, the historical quirk of “on Ukraine” so it would’ve always been normal and proper to just say “in Ukraine;” and by making a thing about “Ukraine” vs “the Ukraine” they invented a new problem to then argue about that has no corollary in Russian or Ukrainian to start with.

Probably “the Ukraine” started in English because some anglo dipshit heard the preposition “na” as similar enough to “the” (and la/le for other romance languages if they even knew that) to just assume it was a definite article, and now they won’t shut up about it. It’s like the origin I heard from a Korean friend that yanks originally made the g*** slur for Koreans because anglos are so unworldly and pig-ignorant they heard “miguk” from Koreans, which literally means “USA/American,” and thought it was the Koreans calling themselves the slur, because they assumed “mi” part is like English “me” because, and I can not stress this enough, they are dumb as hell.

It always annoys me how bent out of shape people get over pronunciation of city and place names in other languages. Some languages have different sounds and thus things are said differently.

The Chinese word for Australia is “Audaliya” and even the frothist of frothers don’t go complaining about it (I hope)

But Iran, Iran so far away

Iran, I couldn’t get away

The most idiotic thing about this is that English pronunciation of both Kiev and Kyiv is equally far from both Russian and Ukrainian pronunciation.

Iran away from my wife

In the liberal mind, “Kiev vs Kyiv” is equal to “Beijing vs Peking” or “Myanmar vs Burma” or “Uluru vs Ayer’s Rock”

Iran should return to the good old times before the revolution when the country was still called Aynrand and literally every woman was wearing bikinis all day so I can oogle at them. It was objectively better back then.

And from UK media it is the same people who will call you a baby for calling it Derry. Even though in that case blood has legit been spilt over it and it stems from colonialism.

Honestly, in half the country (the east) Russian is if anything more indigenous than Ukrainian is.

I pronounce Kyiv so that it rhymes with “shiv”.

Rare British win.

Also though, a lot of people seem unreasonably upset about English speakers pronouncing words differently to how they are in their native languages when that’s just how accents work.

And just a few weeks before the very same people were still calling the country the Ukraine. It was hysterical to see the very same people be very serious and very respectful about the Ukraines culture and language

Eye ran from eye van.