this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2025
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"If yOu UsE tHe DeFiNiTe ArTiCle In FrOnT tHat'S lIkE RuSsIan, a LaNguAgE tHaT nOtAblY dOeSn'T hAvE ArTicLeS aT alL!"
not many people know this, but NATO stands for North Atlantic "The" Organization
Language stuff unrelated to politics because I couldn't care less about which article is used for different countries: in Russian, the preposition "in" translates as "в" (pronounced like the English v) and is the one most commonly used for referring to countries. However, for reasons I don't personally know, Ukraine and possibly other countries (idk lmao I don't speak a lot of Russian) are talked of not "in", but using the preposition "on" (на, sounds like English nah).
It's exactly same in Polish. It's probably some kind of archaism from old slavic language since a lot of the old medieval contacts are "on" but nearly all of the newer ones are "in"
As additional evidence, in Russian there is also an interesting dichotomy between modern form "в России" and archaic form "на Руси".
It's just because the word Ukraine comes from "окраина", which means "borderlands", and in Russian we say "in a country" but "on a land". Same explanation applies to what comrade Collatz_problem (sorry not sure how to @) says below – "на Руси" has a connotation of "on the land of Rus".
P.S. I personally don't see a problem with saying "в Украине", it is grammatically correct Russian that recognises Ukraine as a country.