Ukrainians across the country marked Unity Day, which commemorates the uniting of the eastern and western parts of Ukraine by a treaty signed on Jan. 22, 1919.
As is now traditional, citizens unfurled long Ukrainian-flag banners across bridges and public spaces to symbolize the uniting of the country.
In Kyiv, members of the public formed a human chain and stretched a banner in the colors of the Ukrainian flag across the city’s Paton Bridge, which links the left and right banks of the Dnipro River.
Meanwhile, on the city’s Independence Square, workers of Ukraine State Treasury unfurled a 700-meter-long banner, made up of separate banners representing each of Ukraine’s oblast territorial divisions.
Unity Day is a state holiday in Ukraine, but not a public holiday, and so is not a day off.
The Unification Act between the Ukrainian People’s Republic and the West Ukrainian People’s Republic, which was signed 99 years ago on St. Sophia Square in Kyiv, marked the first attempt in the modern era to form a Ukrainian state.
The treaty was, however largely symbolic: the two states retained separate governments and armies, and both were soon absorbed by neighbors – the West Ukrainian People’s Republic by Poland, and the Ukrainian People’s Republic by Russia, in the form of the Moscow-dominated Soviet Union.
Later, under its secret 1939 pact with Nazi Germany to carve up Poland, the Soviet Union invaded the land that had been the West Ukrainian People’s Republic, and added it to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.
