The officials who testified, George P. Kent, a senior State Department official in charge of Ukraine policy, and William B. Taylor Jr., the top United States diplomat in Ukraine, have found themselves at the center of the effort by Democrats to open an impeachment inquiry into the president.

Mr. Kent testified that efforts to “gin up politically motivated investigations” were “infecting” United States policy toward Ukraine. Mr. Taylor testified that he was told that President Trump cared more about investigations of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., than he did about Ukraine.

On to the second question: Is it Ukraine or THE Ukraine? Americans have used both.

For decades, the country was part of the Soviet Union, and “the Ukraine” was used in English. But after it became independent in 1991, the preferred name became “Ukraine.”

“Ukraine wants its independence to be acknowledged, so no article,” said Irina Reyfman, the chair of the Slavic languages department at Columbia University.

A Dec. 3, 1991, article on the front page of The New York Times, reporting that Leonid M. Kravchuk had won Ukraine’s first presidential election and that Russia had recognized the country’s independence, carried the dateline without the “the.”

A sidebar on “the terminology of nationalism” noted that the White House had also stopped using the article, and that Ukrainian-Americans preferred that rendering.

Back to Kiev: There is also debate over how to spell it. The official State Department biography of George P. Kent, who testified on Wednesday, spells it Kyiv, which reflects the transliteration from Ukrainian. The New York Times still spells it Kiev, which is the transliteration from Russian. (Mr. Kent, a senior State Department official in charge of Ukraine policy, used a pronunciation closer to the Ukrainian version.)