in german ukraine is called "die ukraine", it's even on the german wikipedia just to prove a point: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine

that's just what ukraine is called in german, and she's just translating a bit literally

there's plenty of reasons to hate her, her party, and her base, but poor english shouldn't be one of them

And historians will investigate and tell everyone is because of the financial crisis than COVID than climate wars. That generation just wanted trouble

That used to be the case in America too but there was a push to stop calling it that and refer to it simply as Ukraine. Just because a country chooses to call it one thing doesn’t mean it should or that it has to keep doing it.

i suppose so, but calling it ukraine without an article in german just seems off to me. i don't like saying it, it feels wrong, and speech is often about vibes. in english I'm perfectly fine calling it ukraine. i guess it'll take a few years for me to adapt.

Why is it the case that it's Die Ukraine, Die Niederlande, die Schweiz, die Türkei, die Tschechei, der Libanon but not das Russland, das China, das Peru, das Ungarn, das England, das Luxemburg, das Kroatien, das Serbien, das Kasachstan, das Polen, das Italien, das Frankreich, das Spanien, das Schweden, das Norwegen, das Finnland, das Island, das Grönland, das Bosnien, das Brasilien, das Argentinien, das Portugal, das Sri Lanka, das Indien, das Vietnam, das Thailand, das Japan ....

The vibes of "the Ukraine" are that it's a region rather than a self-sovereign country. That's why there's been a push to stop adding the the.

it's qatar etc etc

i see, that makes sense

Depending on the platform you posted it on, it could simply have been silenced by far-righters reporting the comment enough to hit some automatic removal threshold. Not defending Bloomberg, but it's a possibility to keep in mind.

It's China with their hand up everyone's ass not Putin he is a bitch as much as Trump.

I'm still not convinced she believes a single thing she's saying and instead is just saying whatever will give her more voters in order to funnel government money into her swiss bank account. when things get serious and nazis take power and threaten to look more closely at her lifestyle, she is out of there, ready to live a happy queer life with her wife and children and bank account in swiss.

That's also why she often has that disgusting grin, when holding a speech to her followers, like she is thinking: "i can't believe these nazi idiots are buying this and keep voting for me"

Yeah, some already pointed out the German mistranslation. BUT there's no "the" or "a" in Ukrainian nor in Russian, yet a dogwhistle exists of using "on Ukraine" instead of "in Ukraine".

Belarus is already just short of merging with Russia. Their entire law and bureaucracy are tuned to Russian ones, except of course for the death penalties for dissenters. They straight up have this thing called Union State.

Still, I think you are right. In German we put those articles for some Countries… including USA.

Ukraine is winning! Obviously, the much smaller country is (was?) considered a weaker military might, yet Russia's "two-week" invasion is still ongoing, almost 5 years later. When you consider Russia's actions prior to the full-scale invasion, it's taken about 13 years, cost 1.5 million Russian casualties, and still Ukraine has basically fought them to a standstill defending its homeland. And that's just soldiers. Russia has also lost around a million pieces of equipment, including vehicles and tanks and planes and helicopters and even a couple submarines. According to most estimates, every day of the war in Ukraine costs Russia $500 million to $1 billion. Russia is a rabid dog, attacking her neighboring countries, yet Ukraine is bleeding Europe and the US's enemy for them, and all they need is our continuing support...

Totally - whatever will happening, Russia is coming weaker out of this war. They've lost their old soviet stockpile of tanks, planes, weapons. They have lost so many people and really expensive things like a big chunk of their airforce or their refineries and a lot of important industrial plants. They've gained the ability for geran drones, but that is something that every country will copy in short time.

Plenty of immigrants are supporting anti-immigrant parties. It happens everywhere. They probably think that by openly siding with these parties, they will somehow be exempted from any future atrocities.

the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must

That's the core quote, I believe.

For English it's true that calling it "the Ukraine" feels like you're talking about a region instead of a country, because that's the (historical) reason for the article. So in English "the" does have that implication.

In German however, we use the article for very different, purely grammatical reasons: Every noun in German has one of three gramatical genders, that have nothing to do with its physical nature. A pouch isn't more male than a bag, but nonetheless, we say "der Beutel" and "die Tüte". The same applies to country names. Some are male (der Iran), some are neutral (das Syrien) and some are female (die Türkei). And for countries that are neutral, you just leave out the article in almost every case^1^. It has nothing to do with wether something is a region or an independent country.

A good illustration of this: In German the same country can sometimes be refered to in two different ways with two different genders. "Die USA^2^" is female*, "Das Amerika" is neutral. So you would say "ich fahre nach Amerika" but "ich fahre in die USA". Or an even more obvious case: The Netherlands are often called "Holland" in German, even though Holland is just one region in the Netherlands. But Holland is neutral and Niederlande female. So we say "ich fahre nach Holland" but "ich fahre in die Niederlande". Here the country has the article, while the region does not.

^1^ In some cases the neutral article shows again. For example, if you're talking about a specific version of a country: "Das Frankreich der 50er-Jahre" or "Das Spanien unter Franco"

^2^ The USA are female because they are plural, and every plural is female in German – "Der Mann" but "die Männer" – showing that gramatical gender has no physical reasoning.

This would carry a modicum more weight if Russia's military wasn't embarrassing themselves on a daily basis for the past 4 years against that ant hill.

https://theconversation.com/its-ukraine-not-the-ukraine-heres-why-178748

Also...like the actual largest military on the planet always gets fucked up by "small countries", hell look at what Iran is doing to them right now lol, the smaller country with an actual reason to fight does win fairly frequently.

Edit: I didn't pay attention to the community, just the post itself, please ignore the lost American.

The Economist is a fascist organ

Well USA actually contains the word "The" when you expand the acronym.

If not officially, then at the very least by necessity of the English language

If Ukraine got betrayed and dropped by its allies, I do think here is a time window where Russia still can do A LOT of damage to the Europe, especially in the Baltics. It has a already mobilized and now experienced army along with a war economy.
Denying Ukraine the support it needs now to keep Russia at bay would be a blunder for the ages.

But if Ukraine didn't defend themselves there wouldn't be a war, so they started it!

(/s, because I know there's people on this platform who would actually make this argument.)

I understand it, but as a citizen from "The Netherlands" it has always felt a bit weird.

why is this ruzz facist being given a broader audience?

Correct, or in fewer words, "might makes right." Except it's not exactly the moral of the story. AFAICT there is no 'moral of the story' as it seems to be meant to engage discussion/debate about the nature of morality in conflict and the defense of a home territory and cultural identity in the face of an overwhelming enemy. Unfortunately the Melians got the bad ending, but it doesn't always have to be that way and I find it interesting for being one of the earliest examples of such a debate.