The Ukraine

I'll start by apologising to monolingual purists about the use of the definite article, but considering that all the name of the country means is 'the border region', I insist it should still carry a 'The'. The original Russian does not have definite articles, and has to express the concept in other ways.
So, the country in question. Next month, all of Europe's most committed football fans, the majority of which will not be hooligans, are going to have to go through several levels of ordeals to watch their national sides in a state which routinely tries to kill its democratically elected leaders and is rife with racism and lawlessness. You might say that the experience might shunt the country forward or that ignoring 47 million people on the EU's eastern border will only create bigger problems down the line. But we do a good job of sanctioning states who behave just as badly, just because they're not white.