Flag of Ukraine

Flag origins

Ukraine's flag has blue above yellow, officially approved by parliament on 28 January 1992 in a 2:3 ratio. The colors have older heraldic roots, including a golden lion on blue in the west and blue Cossack banners with golden symbols. The 1848 national movement helped establish the bicolor; a blue-and-yellow flag was raised in Lviv that June. The familiar image of blue sky over wheat fields is meaningful but is not the complete historical origin.

Flag story

Both blue-over-yellow and yellow-over-blue arrangements occurred during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries before consistent standardization. Public documents of the Ukrainian People's Republic in 1918 used blue above yellow, so claims that today's flag is simply upside down are misleading. Suppressed under Soviet rule, it remained an independence symbol, including a clandestine raising in Kyiv on 1 May 1966.

Editorial notes and references

Edited by ABELHA WORKS. The English text translates the administrator-edited Japanese description. Legends should be distinguished from documented history. General reference links do not substantiate every statement in the text.

• Ukraine — general information on Wikipedia
• Japan MOFA: countries and regions (Japanese)

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