Shower thought
🤔💭 Theory 😲💡
Why is Ukraine referred to often as "The Ukraine" as if it were merely a region?
Lets look at other places and countries with similar naming styles:
The Donbass
The Gambia
The Amazon
The Outback
The Midwest
What do these have in common?
Besides maybe Gambia, these refer to a particular region, not an actual country. But even Gambia, small as it is, is not wothout internal division.
Is Ukraine just a paper country?
The more you know....
"Ukraine" also means "borderlands" so English speaking peoples tend to erroneously add a "the" because it makes sense grammatically to them.