page_title: Flag of Ukraine
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Flag of Ukraine / History
caption_attribution_description: English: "This photo taken on road. It is pure Ukraine nature and this is are colors of our flag! The sky and wheat field are ours!"
context_page_description: The flag of Ukraine is a banner of two equally sized horizontal bands of blue and yellow. The top represents sky and the yellow represents wheat. The combination of blue and yellow as a symbol of Ukrainian lands comes from the flag of the Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia used in the 12th century. As a national flag, the blue and yellow bicolour has been officially used since the 1848 Spring of Nations, when it was hoisted over the Lviv Rathaus. It was officially adopted as a state flag for the first time in 1918 by the short-lived West Ukrainian People's Republic and subsequently used by the Ukrainian People's Republic. When Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, the flag was outlawed and, before 1949, there was no official state flag until adoption of the red-azure flag of the Ukrainian SSR. The blue and yellow flag was provisionally adopted for official ceremonies in September 1991 following Ukrainian independence, before finally officially being restored on 28 January 1992 by the parliament of Ukraine.
  Ukraine has celebrated Flag Day each year on 23 August since 2005.
context_section_description: The roots of Ukrainian national symbols come from before Christian times when yellow and blue prevailed in traditional ceremonies, reflecting fire and water. The most solid proof of yellow and blue colours could be traced as far as the Battle of Grunwald at which participated militia formations from various lands of the Polish-Lithuanian Union.
  Yellow–blue, red-black, crimson-olive and especially raspberry colour banners were widely used by Cossacks between the 16th and 18th centuries. These were not the only possible combinations, since normally Cossacks would fly their hetman's banners, which were similar to the coats of arms of the nobility. Also, yellow and blue were the colours common on coats of arms in Galicia. In fact, the coat of arms of Lviv to this day remains a golden lion on a blue field.
  Some put the starting point of the adoption of the current national flag of Ukraine to 1848 when, during the Spring of the Nations on 22 April 1848, a yellow and blue banner was adopted by the Main Ruthenian Council in Lemberg (Lviv), the capital of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, and flew over the city's magistrate for the first time. Although this move did not have significant consequences, the newly formed Ukrainian divisions in the Austrian army used yellow and blue banners in their insignia.
  During the Russian Revolution of 1905, this flag started to be used by Ukrainians of the Dnieper Ukraine, or the Russian part of Ukraine.
caption: Typical agricultural landscape of Ukraine in the Kherson Oblast
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