When I learned Russian many years ago we all had trouble correctly pronouncing Kiev. As Americans, we said kee EV. The spelling in Russian is phonetically k ee yeh v, with stress on the first syllable. The unstressed ye becomes more like an ee and a v at the end loses its "voice" and becomes an f. So something like kee-eef results. We usually said keeEV among ourselves since it was so ingrained in us. It's been decades since I knew much Russian so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.