Firstly, I assumed we were talking about the Republic of the Congo because I’ve never seen someone refer to the DRC as “the Congo.” So my bad for that. If people from either Congo consider “the Congo” problematic, then fair enough, I understand what you’re saying and I can try to change. I had always thought it was different from Ukraine in that “the” was intentionally left in the official name, similarly to the Gambia - which is also named after a river.

My bad, I’ve never seen someone call the DRC “the Congo” and I missed the broader context there.

The official name of the country is “Republic of the Congo.” It is fine to shorten that to “The Congo.”