Kiev or Kyiv?

It was my son who asked me why Kiev is being spelt as Kyiv and pronounced as kee-yiv. I assumed it was the Ukrainian way of spelling and saying Kiev (as in the Chicken in breadcrumbs food) so i went and asked the Pronunciation Unit at work because the least we can do is say the name right and it turns out that there has been a Ukrainian campaign for years to get us Westerners to say and spell it right, i must have missed that email.
The short answer is that Ukrainians call their capital Kyiv (kee-yiv) but it was the Russian version of 'Kiev (kee-yev) which became accepted around the World and even more so when Chicken Kiev's became popular so as Russian tanks roll in Kyiv, if nothing else we can say the name the proper Ukrainian way.  
As for why it is usually called 'The Ukraine', that's us Westerners again and that goes back to the Soviet Union when Ukraine was part of the sprawling USSR and we used it when referring to that part of the Union but since 1991 when the USSR ceased to be and Ukraine gained independence, it became it's own country and 'the' should have been dropped but we had got so used to saying 'the Ukraine' that we just kept
saying it.  
There are other country names that are referred to with 'the', such as Congo, Gambia, Yemen, Lebanon, Sudan, Netherlands, Philippines and Bahamas but as for Ukraine, it's Capital is Kyiv and as is is not part of anywhere else anymore so we don't need to say 'the'.
If nothing else, and it is hard to see any silver linings however small, at least we have learnt that.