Official Symbols of the President of Ukraine

President’s colour represents a blue square cloth bearing the golden trident in the center – the Sign of Prince Volodymyr the Great’s State, edged with gold vegetative ornament. Two-sided silken cloth was embroidered with the use of computer technologies. One side of the President’s colour bears more than a million stitches of a pure gold and yellow gold threads. The embroidered trident has volume due to a special lining. And the flags of the British Queen, US and French Presidents are made with the use of the same technology.

The sign (collar) of the President of Ukraine weighs about 400 grams. President’s collar is not obligatory, but most European heads of state have such a decoration: for instance, the President’s collar (male jewelry like a female necklace) is one of the symbols of state power in Poland, Czechia and Bulgaria. Some countries grant another collar to new head of the state, and the previous one passes to the national museums. An open-work chain with a historical relic – an amulet which, as the legend reads, belonged to Ukrainian Hetman Ivan Mazepa – was among the attributes of the President of Ukraine as an emigrant.

The collar is made of white and yellow gold. Kyiv artists have painted its seven medallions. They represent miniatures of Prince Volodymyr’s Trident, the coat of arms of the Galicia-Volyn principality and that of the Great Lithuanian principality, the “The Cossack with a Musket” sign, Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky’s patrimonial coat-of-arms and the Ukrainian People’s Republic’s coat of arms as the first attempt to establish independent Ukraine in 20th century. The painted medallions alternate with jewelry ones: above laurel wreathes of white gold there are guelder rose leaves of yellow gold gemmed with 96 garnets each one and a half millimeters.

Both, the seal and the collar are kept in leather cases with the velvet lodgement and the imprinted image of the lesser Emblem of Ukraine.

The official seal of the President of Ukraine is ring-shaped. There is an image of the lesser National Emblem of Ukraine in the center of the stamp hemmed with the “The President of Ukraine” inscription. Below the National Emblem one can see an image of the Order of Prince Yaroslav the Wise. The handle of the new seal is garnished with a lapis lazuli ball. The neck or central part of the seal is gilded; its color spectrum goes in line with the national flag of Ukraine – blue above and yellow below. The seal is made of silver and weighs next to half a kilo. It is known that Kyiv jeweler Mykhailo Cheburakhin made it using sketches by Oleksiy Rudenko just for a week.

The presidential mace is made of gold-covered and weighs 750 grams. It consists of two hollow parts: a handle and a top, the so-called apple. They contain a “secret” – a three-edged damask blade bearing engraved “Omnia revertutur” motto (Everything returns – from Latin.) The top of the mace is adorned with golden ornamental medallions and crowned with an enameled and gemmed golden wreath. The mace used to have 64 gold-mounted stones (emeralds and garnets). The blade can be extracted from the mace with the help of the button, decorated with a Yakut emerald. The mace is kept in a mahogany carved coffer.