Tag Archive: Soviet

In Ukraine, these three little letters mean a lot

Ukraine support rally

While reading this article from the World Bank regarding emerging markets, this sentence caused a major pause:

The invasion of the Ukraine has triggered an initial appreciation of the U.S. dollar against EM currencies ….

The Ukraine”? Haven’t we read and heard repeatedly that we shouldn’t use “the” because that feeds into the Soviet-era position that Ukraine is Russia’s territory, not its own nation? Hopefully the inclusion of “the” in the article was an oversight, and indeed there is a mention of “the war in Ukraine” earlier in the article. But often, articles from large organizations pass through more than one writer or editor, so it’s not clear that everyone at the World Bank is on the same page.

This is something to keep an eye on, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine involves not just military weapons, but weapons of words and propaganda as well.

Photo by Robert T Bell, used under Creative Commons license. https://is.gd/DCaHhz