Kyivans gathered at both ends of Paton Bridge in the Ukrainian capital to form a human chain linking the left and right banks of the Dnipro River — a symbol to mark Ukrainian Unity Day on Jan. 22.
Participants, some dressed in period military uniforms, unfurled long blue and yellow banners to form a Ukrainian flag stretching across the river.
Unity Day celebrates a treaty signed in Kyiv on Jan. 22, 1919 between the Western Ukrainian People’s Republic and the Ukrainian People’s Republic — the first attempt in modern times to form a Ukrainian state on Ukrainian territory.
The two states never formed a united government, however, and both were soon snuffed out by their neighbors — most of the Western Ukrainian People’s Republic was absorbed by Poland, while the Ukrainian People’s Republic was invaded and taken over by the Bolsheviks, who formed the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in its place.
The Soviets later seized the former territories of the Western Ukrainian People’s Republic from Poland, in accordance with the Soviet Union’s pact with the Nazis to carve up Eastern Europe between them.
The modern Ukrainian state in its present borders emerged with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
