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You do realize that a vast body of literature and academic works refers to the places in Ukraine solely by their Russian names, especially in historical contexts? Hard as it may be for you to believe, but an average Western reader would not necessarily know that ""Kharkiv"" and ""Kharkov"" refer to the same place. Including Russian names in the lede helps clarify this point, makes cross-referencing historical literature and Wikipedia articles possible, and generally improves our readers' experience. Call it the heritage of Russian imperialism or whatever, but the fact remains that including Russian names in these articles is better for readers than not including them. This said, I don't see why names in Russian proper should be featured so prominently; surely having transliterated Russian names should be sufficient? At least let's tuck Russian proper (and Russian pronunciation) into a footnote.— • (yo?); February 6, 2013; 19:45 (UTC)"