Why you should know: The ‘a’ vs ‘an’ conundrum is not about what letter actually begins the word, but instead about how the sound of the word starts.
For example, the ‘h’ in ‘hour’ is silent, so you would say ‘an hour’ and not ‘a hour’. A trickier example is Ukraine: because the ‘U’ is pronounced as ‘You’, and in this case the ‘y’ is a consonant, you would say “a Ukraine” and not “an Ukraine”.
Tip: when in doubt, sound it out(loud).
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
You can’t use any article in front of Ukraine. Not even “the”. Just like it’s “India”, not a/an/the India. It is Britain, but it is also The United Kingdom. For India, you can use The Republic of India.
A good example for your case can be union. It is a union, not an union, because union starts with the sound yu.
a Ukraine war would be greatly destabilizing for a European peace
Should’ve been “A Ukrainian” probably.
This. Until the above comment, it didn’t occur to me I used the wrong noun.
You just wanted to use an unique example. It’s a honest mistake.
University would have been a better example.