It's just "Ukraine", not "the Ukraine". Saying "the Ukraine" implies "the Ukraine region of the Soviet Union (or Russia)" but they are an independent nation. It's also important to note in this explanation that "Ukraine" means, or at least shares root with, the word borderland. So saying "the Ukraine" is super disrespectful in that it's calling their established nation just the borderland region of what they successfully won independence from.
It'd be like if the UK were constantly sabotaging the US and fighting and trying to install puppet dictators to bend to what the UK wants, and people just referred to the US as "the colonies".
Super demeaning and it implies that Russia conquering Ukraine is the natural order, so it normalizes and implicitly supports invasion attempts.
But yeah, funny wizard. Just thought it was important to help educate people who don't want to accidentally stumble into committing this faux pas.