The “Morning Briefing” newsletter e-mailed by The New York Times on November 22 reported: “This week, The Times adopted a new spelling for Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, the Romanization of the Ukrainian Київ. The previous version, Kiev, is a transliteration from the Russian: Киев.”
The newspaper went on to say:
“The Times is rarely an early adopter in altering place names, waiting until there is a sense that most readers would be familiar with the new word. For instance, the paper quit using Bombay only in 2004, almost a decade after the Indian authorities officially recognized the city as Mumbai.