Coat of arms of Ukraine

The coat of arms of Ukraine is a blue shield with a golden trident. Officially referred to as the Emblem of the Royal State of Volodymyr the Great, or, colloquially, the tryzub (тризуб, "trident"), the insignia derives from the seal-trident of Volodymyr the Great, the first Grand Prince of Kyiv. The small coat of arms was officially adopted on 19 February 1992, while constitutional provisions exist for establishing the great coat of arms, which is not yet officially adopted. The small coat of arms was designed by Andriy Grechylo, Oleksii Kokhan, and Ivan Turetskyi. It appears on the Presidential Standard of Ukraine. Blue-coloured tridents are considered to be an irregular representation by the Ukrainian Heraldry Society. The greater coat of arms which has not been adopted consists of the small coat of arms and the coat of arms of the Zaporizhian Host (Constitution of Ukraine, Article 20). The trident was not thought of as a national symbol until 1917, when one of the most prominent Ukrainian historians, Mykhailo Hrushevskyi, proposed to adopt it as a national symbol (alongside other variants, including an arbalest, a bow or a cossack carrying a musket, i.e. images that carried considerable historical and cultural and heraldic significance for Ukraine). On 25 February 1918, the Central Rada (parliament) adopted it as the coat of arms of the short-lived Ukrainian People's Republic. During the Soviet period of 1919–1991 and independence between 1991 and 1992, the state symbols were consistent with the Russian SFSR and the Soviet Union – a hammer and sickle over the rising sun. The modern "trident" symbol was adopted as the coat of arms of the Ukrainian People's Republic in February 1918, designed by Vasyl Krychevsky. The design has precedents in seals of the Kyivan Rus. The first known archaeological and historical evidence of this symbol can be found on the seals of the Rurik dynasty. However, according to Pritsak, the stylized trident tamga, or seal which was used by Rus rulers such as Sviatoslav I and similar tamgas that were found in ruins are Khazar in origin.