Ukrainophobia and the War over Symbols

Ukrainophobia as a phenomenon

The paradox from which the research began: Ukrainophobia long went unrecognized as a concept. While Russophobia, Judeophobia, or Polonophobia were familiar fields of study, when it came to Ukrainians many people genuinely failed to understand that such a phenomenon existed at all^[1].

The key point: Ukrainophobia is directed against Ukrainians as a political nation, not merely as an ethnic group. Abroad, hostility befell even non-ethnic Ukrainians — simply because of a Ukrainian passport. The phenomenon intensified with Putin’s arrival (a quiet “purge” of Ukrainian organizations in Russia) and was actively deployed as a political technology from 2010 onward^[1].

Through a series of academic seminars titled “Ukrainophobia as a Phenomenon and a Political Technology”, the concept subsequently received a legal definition: it is enshrined in the preamble of the 2023 law on condemning Russian imperial policy and the decolonization of toponymy^[2].

The legislative response on symbols

Ukraine has consistently built up legislation on symbols: in 2015, as part of decommunization, the symbols of the communist and Nazi regimes were banned; in May 2022, the symbols of the Russian invasion; in 2023, the law condemning Russian imperial policy and decolonizing toponymy, which regulates the renaming of objects named for propaganda purposes after the Russian Empire, the USSR, or the Russian Federation^[3].

The myth of the “inverted flag”

The most famous fabrication is that “someone inverted the Ukrainian flag”. This is untrue: no one inverted it. The blue-and-yellow flag (blue stripe on top) is a set of symbols approved as far back as the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917–1921 (the UNR, the Central Rada, the Hetmanate). It was precisely the blue-over-yellow variant that the draft constitutions of the UNR specified (Kamianets-Podilskyi, 1920; Tarnów, 1921–1923), and the Ukrainian National Council confirmed it in 1949^[4]. The confusion over the shades was generated by private interwar interpretations, not by the flag itself.

Symbols as a target of information operations

The flag, coat of arms, and tryzub have long been a target of Russian information-psychological operations. They promoted already-debunked tales: “the coat of arms is wrong — it’s the symbol of the devil, it must be changed”, “the anthem is depressing”, “the flag was a gift from Mazepa or the Austrians”. These fabrications (including from the 2008 TV program “In Search of Truth”) were eagerly picked up by “useful idiots”, and the goal was a single one — to sow confusion in Ukrainian society^[5].

Meanwhile the tryzub itself is a direct refutation of the myth of “invented” symbols. According to research by the historian and heraldist Oleh Odnorozhenko, it is one of the simplest coats of arms in Europe and the world (just a shield and a conventional sign, two colors) precisely because its origin is the personal sign of Volodymyr the Great from the late 10th to early 11th century. During the revival of Ukrainian statehood in the early 20th century, this sign was adopted as the state coat of arms unchanged^[7]. That is, the Ukrainian symbol has a direct continuity from Kyivan Rus’ — nothing “invented”.

Not only symbols: the technologies of separatism

The attack on symbols is part of a broader set of technologies. One example is the manufactured “political Rusynism” in Zakarpattia, which was created as a separate separatist movement in order to produce yet another “hot spot” in Ukraine, of the Transnistria or Karabakh variety. Thanks to subjective factors in 1990–1991, this flashpoint was extinguished, but the negative consequences are felt to this day^[6].

Where the blue-and-yellow actually comes from

The best answer to the tales of a “gifted” or “inverted” flag is its real history. In a street dialogue, Vitaliy Dribnytsia traces it through its milestones. The earliest trace of the blue-and-yellow is associated with the Battle of Grunwald in 1410: in the army fighting against the Teutonic Order were the banners of the Rus’ Voivodeship (the lands of present-day Western Ukraine), and the coat of arms of the Rus’ Voivodeship was a golden lion on a blue field^[8]. The combination of blue and yellow as Ukrainian colors is also visible in Ilya Repin’s painting “Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to the Turkish Sultan”: in the background are two banners, a blue-and-yellow one (furled) and a red-and-black one^[9].

As a national symbol, the blue-and-yellow was established during the Spring of Nations of 1848. In Lviv at that time the Supreme Ruthenian Council arose — the first Ukrainian representative organization — and on 25 June 1848 the blue-and-yellow flag was raised over the Lviv town hall for the first time; the council resolved that yellow and blue were the national Ruthenian (Ukrainian) colors and that the golden lion on a blue field was the coat of arms of the Ruthenian land. (In the video, Dribnytsia ties the appearance of the flag to the student barricades of 1–2 November 1848 — this too is an episode of the same revolutionary events, but the decision about the flag itself and its raising over the town hall falls in June.)^[10] From the mid-19th century the blue-and-yellow spread, and in 1917–1921 it was the official flag of the UNR and of Hetman Skoropadskyi’s Ukrainian State^[11].

That the symbol was real and dangerous to the empire is proven by the persecution: the Bolsheviks banned blue-and-yellow symbols from the 1920s — people were tried for it as “treason against the motherland” and sent to camps. Even in the 1960s–70s, young people and students who hung out flags were punished with real prison terms^[12]. So by the time the USSR collapsed, ready-made national symbols already existed: the tryzub of Volodymyr and the blue-and-yellow flag were enshrined by the 1992 law, which describes the coat of arms as the sign of the princely state of Volodymyr the Great on a blue shield^[13].

The double-headed eagle — not a “legacy of Byzantium”

A separate myth concerns the Russian symbol. It is usually claimed that Moscow inherited the double-headed eagle from Byzantium — together with the marriage of Ivan III and Sophia Palaiologina. In reality, Dribnytsia notes, the double-headed eagle was the symbol of the Tver principality — the one that first subjugated Moscow; it is in fact traditional European heraldry (the double-headed eagle is still on the coats of arms of Austria and Albania). In the time of Sophia Palaiologina it was merely finally cemented^[14]. The irony is that the “heirs of Byzantium” took the symbol rather from a neighboring principality than from Constantinople.

What it means

Ukrainian symbols are not a random set of colors and signs but a continuity reaching back to the Ukrainian Revolution. That is why they became a target: to undermine the flag, the coat of arms, or the anthem is to undermine the very idea of a separate political nation. Recognizing these myths as an instrument of Ukrainophobia, rather than a “debate about design”, is precisely the way not to fall for them.