Ukraine has spent much of autumn 2019 in the international headlines, as a result of the Trump impeachment inquiry and the promise of progress in the Russo-Ukrainian peace process. This spike in media attention has helped revive outside interest in all things Ukrainian, with mixed results. Many journalists have clearly struggled to make sense of Ukraine’s Byzantine political swamp, while others have found the Steinmeier formula remarkably un-German in its baffling inexactitude, leading to the usual litany of bad takes and outright falsehoods.
At the same time, however, editors from some of the world’s biggest media outlets appear to have decided this was the right moment to update their style guides. A number of global heavyweights have recently adopted the Ukrainian-language derived “Kyiv” as their official spelling for the country’s capital city, replacing the Russian-rooted “Kiev.” This trend began with the Associated Press in late August. Since then, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Telegraph, and the BBC have followed suit.