You learn something new everyday. Украина in russian means Ukraine. Окраине means suburbs. Note the common part 'край' in the 2 words, which means edge. Thus, Ukraine in russian means on the edge. Not a very flattering name for a country, if you were Ukrainian. It happens that if you wanted to say I am in Ukraine, you would have used на украине in the past, but now you use в украине. The difference is subtle, but important. Both на and в are prepositions used to signify location, на means 'on' while в means 'in'. In the past, you would have said 'on the edge (Ukraine)..' but that is not very nice, so it has been changed to 'in Ukraine'. Ukraine being the name of an independent nation, rather than being known as the edge of Russia.


Interestingly, yesterday's edition of 'The Independent', which ran an article on the Ukrainian elections, mentions that most russians see Ukrainians as their close cousins, who speak a bit oddly, rather than foreigners. Russia has ambitions to create a EU-style bloc, comprising of herself, Belarus and Ukraine. Well, Belarus is more or less under her fold... the president Lukashenko, is pro-Russian. Belarus, incidentally means White Russia. So now, pro-Russia Yanukovych (of Ukraine) seems to be getting himself re-elected. Russian politics is definitely interesting. Ex-soviet nations have interesting personalities. The Turkmen leader, Niyazov made President for Life, has renamed 2 months after himself and his mother. He also made 'Ruhnama', a book he wrote, compulsory reading and learning for all Turkmens.


Huge interest there, in ex-soviet politics and culture. Explains why russian is a great language to learn.