On 23 August Ukraine marks the Day of the State Flag. The date sits on the eve of Independence Day — and that is a deliberate choice, not a coincidence.

The holiday was established by presidential decree No. 987/2004 of 23 August 2004.

For Bucha the blue and yellow is not an abstraction from a textbook. People here saw it at a time when raising the flag meant risking your life.

The town spent 33 days of occupation without it on the flagpoles. When Bucha was liberated, the flag returned to the buildings before electricity and water did.

A year later Bucha became a place visited by presidents and secretaries-general, and every one of them walked to the memorial beneath that same flag.

There is one more way the community sees this flag most often. Folded into a triangle, handed by soldiers to the mother or wife of a fallen defender.

Last week Bucha said farewell to Serhii Fedorenko, a 53-year-old paper cutter who went to the front in 2024. The flag from his coffin was given to his mother.

This year Flag Day falls the day after Kyiv declared mourning for the seventeen people killed in the night attack.

So 23 August in the communities of Bucha district is not about ceremony. It is about why this flag still exists at all.

As a reminder, Bucha said farewell to Serhii Fedorenko — the whole town saw him off.

Nota bene

Bucha FM is an independent news site and station for the Bucha district. We cover what matters to the community, and we work for you — and because of you. Joining the people who make this possible is simple: support us with any amount.

Support the station