On August 24, 1991, Mykola Porovskyi, along with other members of the Ukrainian Parliament, carried a big blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flag into the parliamentary chamber. It replaced the red-and-blue flag of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic, and it is still kept in the building. On that day, the people’s representatives of what was then the Ukrainian Soviet Republic declared independence from Moscow and proclaimed the state of Ukraine.

Nb: in a roundabout way, this article was originally written in Ukrainian. It was then translated into English from German.