Ukraine celebrates National Flag Day today, Ukrinform reported, quoted by BTA.
The holiday was established to honor the centuries-old building of Ukrainian statehood, the national symbols of independent Ukraine, and to encourage citizens' respect for the state symbols of Ukraine, according to the presidential decree of August 23, 2004. In 2009, amendments to this decree provided for the annual official flag-raising ceremony held throughout Ukraine on August 23.
The blue-yellow colors of the flag have at least a thousand-year history, dating back to Kievan Rus and the Galicia-Volyn Principality. During the wave of European revolutions in 1848, known as the Spring of Nations, the blue-and-yellow flag was established as the flag of the Ukrainian people. In June 1848, it was first raised over the Lviv City Hall. The blue-and-yellow flag was officially recognized as a state symbol with the proclamation of the Ukrainian People's Republic (its independence was declared on January 22, 1918). Later, Ukraine experienced the period of the red flag with a hammer and sickle, and the blue-yellow flag was outlawed.
In the modern history of Ukraine, the blue-yellow flag was officially raised for the first time over the city hall of the city of Stryi in the Lviv region on March 14, 1990. In Kiev, the flag was raised over the city hall on July 24, 1990.
On August 23, 1991, a group of members of parliament brought the blue-yellow Ukrainian flag into the meeting hall of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, and on September 4, it was solemnly raised over the parliament building.
Since the beginning of the Russian aggression, the blue-yellow flag has become a symbol of struggle and resistance against the invaders.
The Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, General Oleksandr Syrsky, greeted defenders with the Day of the National Flag and emphasized that it is a symbol of freedom.
„Our blue-yellow flag has been flying over the heroes of the liberation struggles more than a century ago. Under the blue-yellow colors, the soldiers of the army of the Ukrainian People's Republic, the Ukrainian Galician Army and later the Ukrainian Insurgent Army fought“, the general noted.
According to Syrsky, the whole world recognizes that the blue-yellow flag is a symbol of freedom. A flag that Russia is afraid of. This is the flag of a people fighting for their independence and holding back the "Russian horde, whose goal is to kill and destroy freedom."
On the occasion of the National Flag Day, the Ukrainian flag was meanwhile raised in front of the headquarters of the European Commission in Brussels, according to its publication in "Ex".
"Courage. Resilience. Freedom. The flag of Ukraine embodies all this," the Commission wrote.