You're, supposedly professional translators and in my 67 years of R>E translation of 70 different journals, oblast has been a big deal when all this time it's before your eyes being translated in various ways, when the word itself is common like states in the United States:
Definition of oblast: a political subdivision of Imperial Russia or a republic of the U.S.S.R. or of the Russian Federation
Examples of oblast in a SentenceRecent Examples on the Web
Today, the Donbas war is among the worst humanitarian crises in the world, with frequent attacks occurring from both sides across the oblasts (provinces) of Donetsk and Luhansk.
Oblast | Definition of Oblast by Merriam-Webster
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/oblastRecent Examples on the Web. Today, the Donbas war is among the worst humanitarian crises in the world, with frequent attacks occurring from both sides across the oblasts (provinces) of Donetsk and Luhansk.
Oblast - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblast
An oblast (UK: / ˈ ɒ b l ɑː s t /, US: / ˈ ɑː b l æ s t /) is a type of administrative division of Belarus, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Ukraine, and the former Soviet Union and Kingdom of Serbs, Croats.