Kyiv Not Kiev

They thought that bit belonged to nobody,
And that we wanted it,
But actually, we didn’t care less,
So long as it was a democracy;

So they thought they’d just take that bit back,
As if it was something to be claimed,
The ‘borderlands’,
That bit down there,
Otherwise known as just Ukraine 🇺🇦;

So that is why it should be known Ukraine,
Not The Ukraine,
And Kyiv not Kiev,
Kharkiv not Kharkov,
etc.,
As those are just relic Russian names;

It’s just a small thing, which we can do,
That happens to have major symbolism,
And when you understand the reasons behind the ‘change’,
It much more easily sticks in your brain!

KyivNotKiev is an online campaign started by the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) together with the 15 member centre for strategic communications “StratCom Ukraine” on 2 October 2018. Its goal is to persuade English-language media and organisations to exclusively use Kyiv (derived from the Ukrainian language name Київ) instead of Kiev (derived from the Russian language name Киев) as the name of the Ukrainian capital.

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