No slang in the Ukraine

[Bapopik at AOL.COM]

Ukraine girls really knock me out.
--The Beatles, "Back in the U.S.S.R."

   Greetings from Kiev...There's a Ukrainian boxer who wants to challenge Lennox Lewis, so maybe Ukrainian girls really can knock you out...A fellow traveler complained that they all dress like whores.
   My tour guide is a 20-year old college student (mathematics).  I asked about slang, and, as I sometimes get as a response, there is "no slang" in the Ukraine.  For example, outside this hotel is the bear with the Olympic belt (a symbol of the 1980 Olympics).  I asked if the bear had a name.  "Bear," he said.
   There are no English-language cookbooks for sale here at the hotel, and there's a limited amount of English language reading material of any kind.
   For the record, I plugged in these words into the online OED, and there isn't much:

UKRAINE  22 hits
UKRAINIAN  31 hits

   From WHAT'S ON (www.whatson.com), 18 July 2002, pg. 36, col. 1:

_Ukraine's "Village Fete"_
   People in Kyiv, both expats and locals alike, are fond of saying that Ukraine is really one big village, where everyone knows each other and where you can expect to bump into acquaintances all over the place.  If this is true, then surely the village fete of this "silo" nation is the Tavria Games, the outdoor summer festival which continues to attract huge numbers of young Ukrainians to a small town on the SOuth Ukrainian steppe.

(Silo nation?--ed.)