Flag of Ukraine

Article 20 of the Constitution of Ukraine states the following, citing: "the State Flag of Ukraine is a banner of two equally sized horizontal bands of blue and yellow colour." (Ukrainian: "Державний Прапор України — стяг із двох рівновеликих горизонтальних смуг синього і жовтого кольорів.").[9][10]

In addition to the normal horizontal format, many public buildings, such as Verkhovna rada in Ukraine use vertical flags. Most town halls fly their town flag together with the national flag in this way; some town flags in Ukraine exist only in vertical form. The proportions of these vertical flags are not specified. When hung like a banner or draped, the blue band should be on the left, as illustrated. When flown from a vertical flagpole, the blue band must face the mast.

"Freedom for Ukraine" cinderella stamp, featuring the Ukrainian flag with a gold fringe and a gold coat of arms on top of the flag pole

The flag did not appear on Ukrainian official postal stamp issues until the 1992 was released, depicting the flag with state coat of arms. Since that time the flag has frequently appeared on stamps. Cinderella stamps of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists were printed outside Ukraine during the Soviet period and served patriotic purposes.

Traditionally, the flag may be decorated with a golden fringe surrounding the perimeter of the flag, as long as it does not deface the flag proper. The beginning of this tradition was the flag of the Ukrainian SSR. The Great Soviet Encyclopedia shows a flag decorated with a gold star. Ceremonial displays of the flag, such as those in parades or on indoor posts, often use a fringe to enhance the beauty of the flag. No specific law governs the legality of this fringe. Traditionally, the Army, Guard, Navy and Air Force use a fringed flag for parades, color guards and indoor displays, while the Office of the President and local authorities use a fringed flag for all purposes.

The Ukrainian flag flying on the Lviv Theatre of Opera and Ballet with the statue of Glory

Ukrainian flags are customly displayed continuously at certain locations.

• Maidan Nezalezhnosti, main square of Kiev, traditional place for political rallies, including four large-scale radical protest campaigns (Orange Revolution and Euromaidan).
• Presidential Administration Building, Verkhovna Rada building and Budynok Uryadu.
• Kiev City Council
• Lviv High Castle
• Vernadsky Research Base
• At State Border Guard Service of Ukraine sites.
• National, regional and local government buildings

The flag should especially be displayed at full staff on the following days:

• 1 January: New Year's Day
• 7 January: Orthodox Christmas
• 22 January: Ukrainian Unity Day
• 8 March: International Women's Day
• 1 & 2 May: International Workers' Day
• 9 May: Victory Day over Nazism
• 28 June: Constitution Day
• 23 August: Flag Day
• 24 August: Independence Day
• 21 November: Day of Dignity and Freedom
• 6 December: Armed Forces Day
• 25 December: Western Christmas

The flag is displayed at half-staff (half-mast in naval usage) as a sign of respect or mourning. Nationwide, this action is proclaimed by the president. Half-mast means the flag is flown two-thirds of the way up the flagpole with at least the height of the flag between the top of the flag and the top of the flagpole. Black ribbons indicate mourning on banners that can't be lowered to halfmast.

• 4th Saturday of November: Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Holodomor
• Other historical cases: mass victims of accidents, War in Donbass and Euromaidan; Death and state funeral of Lech and Maria Kaczyński, Funeral of Pope John Paul II and 11 September attacks.

UPR flag with the blue and yellow flag, Ukrainian War of Independence, 1918

Ukrainian Galician Army troops with the blue and yellow flag, 1918

Both blue–yellow and yellow–blue flags were widely used during the Ukrainian struggle for independence in 1917. For the first time in the Russian Empire the blue-yellow flag was flown on 25 March 1917 in Petrograd during a 20,000-strong mass demonstration.[12] On the territory of the Russian Ukraine (Little Russia) the national flag of Ukraine was flown for the first time in Kiev on 29 March 1917 by soldiers.[12] On 1 April 1917 Kiev saw a 100,000-strong demonstration that carried over 320 national flags.[12] After that similar demonstration with Ukrainian flags took place across the whole Russian Empire even beyond the Ukrainian ethnic lands.[12] Numerous famous Ukrainian politician wrote their recollection about the April 1 demonstration such as Mykhailo Hrushevsky and Serhiy Yefremov stating that there were blue-and-yellow flags, while Dmytro Doroshenko claimed that there were yellow-and-blue.[12] The blue-yellow flag was flown at the First Ukrainian Military Congress on 18 May 1917.[12]

There are reliable sources that indicate that an official flag was declared by the Ukrainian People's Republic in 1918 is blue–yellow. Some sources mention that the yellow–blue was adopted by Tsentralna Rada on 22 March 1918.[13] Other sources point out that no hard proof of such decision exists.[12][14] Instead, they refer to the decision on the Fleet Flag, which was set to be light blue–yellow[15] as an indication that the official flag was light blue–yellow.[16] Also were adopted other service flags of the Ukrainian People's Republic.[17]

The official flag of Pavlo Skoropadsky's Hetmanate also was light blue–yellow and became the same under Symon Petlura's Directorate. The flag of West Ukrainian People's Republic was blue and yellow. The anarchist free-soviets that existed during the civil war used the black flag.

Among Ukrainian immigrant organisations there were proponents of both blue–yellow and yellow–blue flags. Eventually, it was agreed to use the blue–yellow flag until the issue was resolved in the independent Ukraine.

Photo of the Ukrainian flag confiscated by the KGB after it was installed on one of the Kiev universities in 1966. The flag contains lines of the Ukrainian anthem "Ukraine has not perished, it has not been killed".

During the Soviet rule the Ukrainian flag was prohibited and displaying of it was criminally prosecuted for "anti-Soviet propaganda". The first flag of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was adopted on 10 March 1919, to serve as the symbol of state of the Soviet Ukraine. Details of the official flag changed periodically before the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, but all were based on the red flag of the October Revolution in Russia and an exact replica of the Soviet Russia. The first flag was red with the gold Cyrillic sans-serif letters У.С.С.Р. (USSR, acronym for Ukrayinskaya Sotsialisticheskaya Sovetskaya Respublika in the Russian language). In the 1930s a gold border was added. In 1937, a new flag was adopted, with a small gold hammer and sickle added above the gold Cyrillic serif letters У.Р.С.Р. (URSR, for Ukrayins’ka Radyans’ka Sotsialistychna Respublika in the Ukrainian language).

The Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists is a Ukrainian political organisation which as a movement originally was created in 1929 in Western Ukraine (at the time interwar Poland). For long time OUN did not officially have its own flag; however, during the Hungarian and Polish aggression against the Republic of Carpathian Ukraine in 1939, Carpathian Sich, a militarised wing of OUN, adopted its flag from the OUN's emblem – golden nationalistic trident on a blue background. The flag was finalised and officially adopted by the organisation only in 1964 at the 5th Assembly of Ukrainian Nationalists.

The Ukrainian Insurgent Army was a Ukrainian nationalist paramilitary and later partisan army that engaged in a series of guerrilla conflicts during World War II against Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, and both Underground and Communist Poland. The group was the military wing of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists — Bandera faction (the OUN-B), originally formed in Volyn in the spring and summer of 1943. Its official date of creation is October 14, 1942,[1] day of Intercession of the Theotokos feast. The battle flag of the UPA was a 2:3 ratio red-and-black banner. The flag continues to be a symbol of the Ukrainian nationalist movement. The colours of the flag symbolise 'Ukrainian red blood spilled on Ukrainian black earth'.

In 1949, the flag of the Soviet Ukraine was changed once again.[7] The Soviet Union managed to obtain two additional seats in the United Nations by adding as members Ukraine along with Byelorussia.[7] The change was due to the fact that all the Soviet flags were the same.[7] The new Ukrainian flag consisted of a red (top, 2/3) and an azure (bottom, 1/3) stripes,[7] with the golden star, hammer and sickle in the top left corner. The Communist party leaders such as Khrushchev and Kaganovich were afraid of using words light blue and blue which were used by the Ukrainian diaspora.[7]

During the Soviet period, there were multiple unsanctioned attempts to hoist the national blue-and-yellow flag. In 1958 in village of Verbytsia, Khodoriv Raion there was established an underground group, members of which at night were raising national flags and spread anti-Soviet pamphlets.[18]

The Ukrainian national flag was raised outside Kiev's City Hall for the first time on 24 July 1990.

A girl with the Ukrainian flag at a vyshyvanka parade

Under the influence of Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika and glasnost years, the individual Soviet republics had strengthened their sense of national identity, which led to the Collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. This concerned the three Baltic states and Western Ukraine, which were the last territories annexed into Soviet Union. These efforts were accompanied with attempts to restore the respective historical national symbols. In 1988, the Supreme Soviet of the Lithuanian SSR re-established Lithuania's historic coat of arms as the state symbol. The Parliaments of Latvia and Estonia soon followed.

The events in the Baltic countries soon led to similar processes in Ukraine. Particularly, West Ukraine and Ukrainian SSR's capital Kiev (Kyiv) constantly held political demonstrations with the national yellow-and-blue flags waving above the heads of demonstrators.

• On 14 March 1990, the Ukrainian flag was raised for the first time after the establishment of the Soviet Union in the small city of Stryi.[19]
• On 20 March 1990, the town council of Ternopil voted upon the usage and re-establishment of the yellow-and-blue flag and the tryzub as well as the national anthem Shche ne vmerla Ukrainy. On the same day, the yellow-and-blue national flag was flown for the first time in about 80 years on a governmental building in Kiev, replacing the then official red-azure flag of the Ukrainian SSR.
• On 28 April 1990, the oblast council (oblasna rada) of Lviv also allowed the use of the national symbols of Ukraine within the Oblast.
• On 29 April 1990, the yellow-and-blue flag was flown from the Ternopil city theater's flagstaff without the official flag of the Soviet Union hanging above it.
• After 24 July 1990, the yellow-and-blue flag was flown for the first time over an official governmental building of the Kiev City Council on the Maidan Nezalezhnosti square of the Khreschatyk street.[20]
• After the declaration of independence of Ukraine on 24 August 1991, the national yellow-and-blue flag flew for the first time over the Ukrainian Parliament (Verkhovna Rada) building on 4 September 1991.

One claimed version is that since the one of first known colour depictions of Kyiv Coat of Arms was mainly in yellow-blue colours, which may presume, that this tradition was held since Nordic-Slavic from his origins Volodymyr, the Great Konung of Kyiv and earlier (Great Prince, after adoption of Byzantium Christianity). At least, when Poltava battle was held, Cossacks of Mazepa were struggling under the yellow-blue banners, while their Swedish allies – under yellow ones.

In reality, however, the blue-yellow coloring dates back to Kyivan Ruthenia, as an early version of the Tryzub, Ukraine's national coat of arms, sported the same coloring as the seal for Sviatoslav I of Kyiv (945).

Ukrainians commonly refer to the flag as yellow and light blue (жовто-блакитний, zhovto-blakytnyi)[21]—a different version of the flag used during UNR (Ukrainian National Republic) years (1917–1921) with yellow on the top and blue on the bottom. The yellow on the top represents golden domes (cupolas) of Christian churches and the blue the Dnieper river.

It has to be noted that although most Ukrainians identify their flag in the spoken language as "yellow and light blue" (Ukrainian: жовто-блакитний, zhovto-blakytnyy), the current flag in reality is blue (the upper band) and yellow (the lower band). The issue is quite significant, because the historical alteration of the flag (from yellow–blue to blue–yellow) did not affect the spoken language. Back in 1848 the flag was indeed yellow and blue, and it was later changed to blue and yellow to be more appealing to the common person. The common explanation of "blue sky above yellow field of wheat" was invented around that time, and, although this evocation of a Ukrainian landscape has nothing to do with the choice of colours or the history of the original yellow and blue, it certainly has formed the Ukrainians' conception of their flag.

The head of the Ukrainian Heraldry Society, Andriy Grechylo, points to the fact that the discussion about order of colours was taking place as far back as 1918.[7] Nonetheless, both governments of the Ukrainian People's Republic as well as the Ukrainian State defined that the upper half would be light-blue, while the lower would be yellow.[7] During 1918 it was taken into consideration that light blue would lose its shade under sun, therefore it was decided to make the colour darker.[7]

Already in the 1918 draft of Constitution of the Ukrainian People's Republic the order of colours was defined as blue and yellow.[7] The same order could be found in legislative acts of the West Ukrainian People's Republic for November 1918 and the Republic of Carpathian Ukraine on March 15, 1939.[7] The argument on the order of colours was taking place in the Ukrainian diaspora as well.[7] In 1949 it was decided that until in Ukraine it would not be defined a single state flag, the diaspora will be using the blue-and-yellow banner.[7]

On 21 April 2011 the Verkhovna Rada adopted a law which allows to raise the Victory Banner on the Victory Day.[22] The current Victory Banner was adopted in Russia back in 2007. On 20 May 2011 the law was signed by the President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych.[23] On June 17, 2011 the Constitutional Court of Ukraine recognised the law as non-constitutional and proposed the parliament to implement required amendments to the Constitution of Ukraine.[24] On 9 April 2015, the Ukrainian parliament passed legislation on decommunization banning the promotion of symbols of “Communist and National Socialist totalitarian regimes”.[25] From then on Soviet symbols, like the Victory Banner, are only allowed if located in a cemetery.[26]