According to Art. 20 of the Constitution of Ukraine, one of the state symbols of Ukraine is the State Flag of Ukraine. Its colors symbolize certain ideas of national and
political and historical nature.
Blue and yellow colors were first mentioned around 1410 on the flags of the Galicia-Volyn principality. They still depicted a golden lion on a blue field. The Zaporozhian Cossacks also had a yellow and blue flag, which they used in peacetime, in contrast to the crimson battle flag. Blue and yellow colors were also in the coats of arms of Ukrainian lands, cities and officers' families.
From the eighteenth century, these colors are presented on the regimental flags of Kyivskyi, Lubenskyi, Poltavskyi, Chernihivskti, Iziumskyi Cossack regiments. They were used to depict many coats of arms of Ukrainian hetmans and Cossack officers (Hetmans Petro Doroshenko, Ivan Briukhovetskyi, Kyrylo Rozumovskyi, Kosh Ataman Petro Kalnyshevskyi, Colonels Danylo and Ivana Nechaiv, Ivan Bohun).
The tradition of combining yellow and blue colors extends to the coats of arms of the cities of that time of Ukraine: Kyiv, Lubny, Myrhorod, Pryluky, Chernihiv, Nizhyn and others. But these colors are most common in Western Ukraine. Flags, dominated by a combination of yellow and blue colors, were raised above the city halls in the cities of Sambor, Stanyslavov, Kolomyia, Stryi, Sanok.
In 1848, the yellow and blue flag in the form of two horizontal stripes was raised for the first time in Lviv at the town hall. In 1911, the widespread use of the yellow
and blue flag at various mass events began, in particular during the celebration of the 50th anniversary of Taras Shevchenko's death (1911). Yellow and blue flags
appeared in mass at the demonstrations of Ukrainians during the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917–1921, and the first Ukrainian national military units were formed under them. In March 1918, the Central Rada approved the state emblem and state flag of the Ukrainian People's Republic. Under Hetman P. Skoropadsky, the yellow and blue flag was replaced by a blue and yellow one. And today our flag is the flag of unity, faith in a better future, faith in victory.
As the poet Oleksandr Oles wrote:
Blue as the sea, as a golden day -
From the sky and the sun our flag is clear.
I carry my native flag high!
May it, glorified, prosper to all!

Head of Department of Social Sciences and Humanities,
Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor
Volodymyr Hrechenko