Jan 21, 2015

Novorussian Federation?

I've found the following image in social medias, and I immediately became obsessed by it. Since the post about Novorussian flags was one of my most visited ever, I decided to make a post with some of my hypothesis about this image.


The flags for Donetsk, Lugansk and Kharkov republics are well-known by the media. The others, however, are likely to be imaginary flags.

You already know it, but, for this post, it's important that the Russian flag is fresh in your mind, specially the exact sequence of the colors: white-blue-red.


If you look at the table below, you may noticed some patterns:
  • All republic flags are tricolor;
  • Most of them have two stripes in common to Russian flag showed above;
  • No republic flag is directly based in Ukrainian oblast flag, even when it was already a tricolor;
  • Ukrainian blue-yellow doesn't appear in any flag [e.g. Dnepropetrovsk].
I must remember the column "Source?" shows only my hypothesis, so they may not necessarily correspond to reality.

OblastOblast flagRepublic flagSource?
DnepropetrovskDon Cossacks: blue → black
Imperial Russia: white → red

This variant
Russia : white → purple
DonetskRussia: white → black
KharkovRussia: white → green
KhersonRussia: red → white
LuganskRussia: white → sky blue
NikolaevRussia : red →  black
OdessaPossibly inspired by the city of Odessa, very important port during Russian Empire.

This variant
Russia: white → yellow[?]
ZaporizhiaKuban People's Republic: change of ratios

As I had to redo some flags, here's an all-new map based on the first image, but showing the whole of Ukraine [Crimea disputed area is shown hatched]:


Comments and suggestions are welcome.