I wouldn’t expect “the” to be part of the official Russian name, seeing as there are no articles in Russian… 
My mistake on the United/Union thing though.
Actually, what is now southern Ontario and southern Quebec was known as The Canadas, when it was the British provinces of Upper and Lower Canada.
The major way that this distinction shows up in Russian (which, as you mentioned, is article-free) is the preposition that you use to describe the noun. “I’m going to the Ukraine” would be translated as “Я еду на Украину” (Ya yedu na Ukrainu). “I’m going to Ukraine” would be “Я еду в Украину” (Ya yedu v Ukrainu). The difference is that на means “onto” (or “upon”), while в means “into” in this context. One travels into a country, while one travels onto a region - e.g., I’d travel “onto” the beach, the islands, or the Far East, while I’d travel “into” France, or South Africa, or the dive bar down on the beach. And like all things in Russian, there’s a ton of exceptions, so one would travel “into” a continent.
And, since both exceptions and arguments are fun, the usage of “na” vs. “v” has been debated and waxed and waned in both Russian and Ukrainian for the last four hundred years. Ain’t the politics of language grand?
…and some transcend further still:
“The Dominion of Canada” has fallen out of use, too, but it’s still fun to say.
The Czech Republic.
You don’t seem to hear it much any more, but it used to be quite common for people to refer to what is now known as Argentina as “The Argentine.”
Also, the Indonesian island now known as Sulawesi used to be known, not so long ago, as The Celebes. However, it has never a unitary independent nation, so far as I know.
how the hell do you pronounce a single letter with no vowels and make it flow in a sentance? 
Though I was highly amused when I learned that german dropped an entire tense 
no more gerund form, you more or less use the infinitive sort of. Could you imagine how outraged the French would be if their government told them they could no longer use the gerund form :eek: Their language nuts get teitchy about imported words and their ‘language purity’ :D:D
Welcome to Slavic languages. That one’s actually not very hard to pronounce; I don’t speak Russian but I’d just join the “v” to “Ukraina”. Try this one for a change.
“Government” does not dictate anything about language, usage determines it. That’s as true of German as of French or as any other language. Americans very often get the wrong idea about language regulatory bodies (which most languages have, as a matter of fact); they’re only advisory bodies, nothing more.
How do you add a plural or possessive marker in English (an “s”) and make it flow in a sentence? Same basic idea, except with a “v” sound that happens to be broken out into a separate word [edit: and precedes the word being modified rather than follows it.]
so how do they get everybody to not use the old gerund?
I have a feeling it is one of those deals where it is a sound combination that is difficult to make if you are not raised doing it [like many americans cant roll Rs to save their lives because in general american english doesnt roll rs. =)
In much the sameway as thou art constrained from using the Jacobean second-person singuar pronouns lest others laugh at thee.
None of these are the same thing. In the first five cases you use ‘the’ because there’s descriptive words in there. It’s used to describe a united set of states, republics or emirates, or a kingdom, or a democratic republic. You’d never see ‘the Britain’ by contrast. The Seychelles and Maldives use it because they’re plural. The Congo does indeed use it, because it describes an area, but ‘the Congo’ isn’t a country and you couldn’t use it to describe a country.
‘The Ukraine’ has no descriptive words, is not plural and can be used to describe a country, which makes it different. The Sudan and the Lebanon are two correct parallel examples that have been mentioned.
The one other case I can think of with an article, The Gambia, apparently gets its name because the name derives from the Gambia River. This may also be the situation for the Congo.
Interestingly, in languages such as French and Italian, most countries take articles (la France, l’Italie, le Canada), and it’s the ones that don’t that are the exceptions – generally single islands, such as Cuba or even Terre-Neuve-et-Labrador (the other Canadian provinces get articles) or city states (Saint-Marin).
Spanish doesn’t use articles generally in the same way, but uses them for a larger list of countries than English does; they’re optional, but idiomatic (la India, la China, el Brasil, el Canadá).
Not only that, but in French some verb tenses are disappearing as well. The simple past is a solely literary tense, and quite commonly used in this context, but the imperfect subjunctive and pluperfect subjunctive are on the way out even as literary tenses.
Sudan officially dropped the former “the” from its name back in the '90s, around the time Ukraine did so. In Arabic, al-Sūdān literally means ‘that of the black people’. Aswad means ‘black’, and the plural form of aswad for human beings is sūd. So by the addition of a suffix, the name al-Sūdān is derived from that word.
Actually, the original meaning of “the Sudan” was not a country name, but the name of a geographical zone (similar to “the Ukraine”).
Going southward, first there was “the Sahara.” Not the Sahara Desert, mind you, which would be redundant. In Arabic, ṣaḥārá is the plural form of ṣaḥrá, which is simply the word for ‘desert’.
Next was “the Sahel”-- because in Arabic sāḥil means coast. Making a metaphor of the desert being like an ocean (of sand), so the area bordering that was the coast. The name Swahili is derived from the plural form of the same word (sawāḥil), meaning people on the east coast of Africa.
Next was “the Sudan” which originally (and still to this day) is a geographical term for the savanna region where black people live, covering southern Senegal, southern Mali, northern Ghana, northern Nigeria, southern Chad, as well as the country named Sudan located at the eastern end of this eponymous geographical belt. By dropping “the” from their name, they established “Sudan” as the name of an independent nation instead of just a general region.
I don’t think “the Lebanon” ever referred to the country. It too was the name of an area, short for “the Lebanon Mountains” (from the Canaanite/Hebrew word for ‘white’, because those were the only snow-capped mountains in the region). As far as I know, the country which became independent in 1943 has always been named just “Lebanon.”
“The Argentine” always sounded very strange to me. It seems to have become obsolete before I was born (i.e. a very long time ago). I have no idea why Argentina was ever called that, unless it was the name of a geographical zone like the other examples.
For that matter, it sounded very strange when the British music press referred to the popular progressive rock band Yes as “the Yes.” Huh? But I’m guilty of the same thing, because I habitually say “the Indigo Girls” when the band name is actually just “Indigo Girls,” which nobody seems to be aware of, not even me. This has got to be the sort of reason why David Byrne’s band tried to banish the the from their name by titling their second album The Name of This Band is Talking Heads. Got that, Rolling Stone? The discarded the was then snatched up by a band who recycled it. “The The.” 
I’ve never heard Yes being called “the Yes”, but isn’t The Who’s correct name just “Who”?
Just to expand on Johanna’s point a little: Prior to 1956-60 the present Republic of the Sudan was “the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan”, i.e., that part of The Sudan (geographic region) held as a condominium by the U.K. and Egypt. The present Mali was “French Sudan” and was briefly an idependent nation named “Sudan” before joining with the former French Guinea (now just Guinea, not Equatorial, -Bissou, or what have you) in the Mali Federation, named after the medieval Sudanese empire. When they split up, the inland part (FKA French Sudan) retained the name Mali.
I would guess it’s a direct translation of the river “La Plata”.