Ukraine Flag

Description

Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the northeast; Belarus to the north; Poland, Slovakia and Hungary to the west; and Romania, Moldova, and the Black Sea to the south. Its capital is Kiev. Ukraine is currently in a territorial dispute with Russia over the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia annexed in 2014. Including Crimea, Ukraine has an area of 603,628 km2 (233,062 sq mi), making it both the largest country entirely within Europe and the 46th largest country in the world. Excluding Crimea, Ukraine has a population of about 42 million, making it the 32nd most populous country in the world. Its capital and largest city is Kiev. Ukrainian is the official language and its alphabet is Cyrillic. The dominant religion in the country is Eastern Orthodoxy.

The flag of Ukraine is a banner of two equally sized horizontal bands of blue and yellow (Constitution of Ukraine, Article 20). The flag of Ukraine is a combination of two colours where the top represents the sky and the yellow represents the 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 bi-colour 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 the 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.