The national emblems of Ukraine are the coat of arms, the flag, and the seal. They were constantly changing during the millennium of Ukrainian history. It happened because of various political, social, cultural and other factors. This process is common to many European nations.
The contemporary national coat of arms of Ukraine, an or trident on azure, is the most ancient of all the Ukrainian insignia of nationwide significance. It represents a synthesis of a preheraldic device of the ruling dynasty of the tenth century and of the oldest Ukrainian national heraldic tinctures from the thirteenth century. The classic form of the Ukrainian trident is found on the gold and silver coins of Vladimir the Great (979—1015), the Grand Prince of Kyiv.
The scientists still investigate the problems of the origin and of the original meaning of the Ukrainian trident. The archaeological finds of tridents in Ukraine go back to the first century A. D. There is no doubt that this emblem was a mark of authority and a mystic symbol of several ethnic groups which inhabited ancient Ukrainian territory.
The trident became a hereditary preheraldic badge of all of medieval Ukraine and in every generation it underwent certain changes.
Tridents are found on many objects of that period: coins, bricks of significant buildings (palaces, castles), seals, official jewellery, ceramics, manuscripts. The archaeological studies say that the number of tridents in various forms is about 200.
After the renaissance of independent Ukraine on January 22, 1918, the trident was adopted, by a law of March 22, 1918, as a national device of the Ukrainian National Republic. It was adopted in the form of a Great and a Small Coat of Arms representing the classic trident of Vladimir the Great in an ornamental wreath.
The ancient Ukrainian rulers of the entire period of the medieval monarchy used distinctive banners for their armies. Red was the most frequent colour, blue and white were also used but yellow rarely appeared. In the middle of the nineteenth century, when the national revolutions marked the course of European history, arose the necessity for a visible symbol of the self-determination of the Ukrainian nation. The Supreme Ruthenian Rada in Lvov, reviving in 1848 the coat of arms of the former kingdom (azure with the or lion rampant), simultaneously accepted the combination of national colours of Ukraine. Both, the light blue flag charged with the golden crowned lion and the horizontally striped flag (yellow above light blue) were used at that time and later became the national flag in Galicia as well as all over Ukraine.
The light blue above yellow flag was established for the Western Ukrainian National Republic on November 13, 1918, and for the Carpatho-Ukrainian Republic on March 15, 1939 as a symbol of the all-Ukrainian unity.
Both the yellow above light blue flag and the light blue above yellow flag were used until 1949.