"The Ukraine" Became "Ukraine"

What's in a name? 

In the last few years, "The Ukraine" became "Ukraine" - to the best of my knowledge. Why?

People have been admonished for essentially saying that Ukraine was not a country by calling it "The Ukraine." Where did this all come from? Where is it all going?

Ukraine: Origin Story, In Reverse?

Crimea

The Crimea (Oh, God! Not another "The" place!). Okay, so the Crimea Peninsula was gifted to the Soviet Republic of Ukraine by Nikita Khrushchev in 1954, because Khrushchev's wife was Ukrainian. Wait, what!?!

Why does Crimea matter in this whole scenario? Well, it seems to be indicative of what happened in the Soviet Union. Whether by design - or by circumstance of their vast numbers in Soviet proper - Russians were resettled or migrated to non-Russian places. Crimea was full of ethnic tartars. Kaliningrad was full of ethnic Germans, Poles, and Baltic nationals. Russians were everywhere, but what did it matter? The Soviet Union was one country. Everyone was communist - comrade.

Soviet Collapse 

So when the Soviet Union fell, Russians were everywhere. But who really cared, right? Everyone had bigger fish to fry. How were families going to put food on the table? Who was going to employee young men, so there wasn't lawlessness or a new revolution? Who was going to keep the nuclear weapons?

In Ukraine, ethnic Russians became Ukrainian citizens. But weren't many ethnic Russian's already Ukrainians before the dissolution of the Soviet federation?

Was the Soviet Union going to be Balkanized like the Balkans?

Pre-Soviet Ukraine

Before the Soviet Union, Ukraine was part of the Russian Empire. Catherine the Great had settled part of The Ukraine and deemed it New Russia. Many major Ukrainian cities were actually founded by Catherine the Great. The Crimean War was a British/Russian War. How Ukrainian was The Ukraine?

Well, let us see.

Ukraine diverged from Russian [...] according to.

What's In A Name? And Why Does It All of Sudden Matter?

So back to resent history. 

"In 1993, the Ukrainian government explicitly requested that, in linguistic agreement with countries and not regions,^[44] the Russian preposition в, v, be used instead of на, na,^[45] and in 2012, the Ukrainian embassy in London further stated that it is politically and grammatically incorrect to use a definite article with Ukraine.^{[3]" - from the Wikipedia Article "Name of Ukraine"}

Referencing the same Wikiedia article, and using my own ability of deduction - or induction - it appears that slavic languages used "na" ("on") and "v" ("in") interchangably before Ukraine became its own country. Also, obviously "the" in English appeared to have been a loose translation of "in" or "on." 

So, "on" seems to indicate a region, and "in" seems to indicate sovereignty. And [nothing] in English is more sovereign than "the."