I am currently reading a book titled 'Energy at the Crossroads' by Vaclav Smil. It strikes me that the auther repeatedly mentions 'the Ukraine', so now I start to wonder, is it just this one man (which I find hard to believe since someone would surely correct him) or is it tradional to speak of 'the Ukraine'. For me it sounds rather strange, why would you speak of 'the Ukraine' when you speak of plain Russia in the same sentence. On the other hand we do speak of the United Kingdom, so perhaps my question should be: What does Ukraine actually mean?