Flag of Belarus

Flag of Belarus
The national flag of Belarus is a red-and-green flag with a white-and-red ornament pattern placed at the hoist (staff) end. The current design was introduced in 2012 by the State Committee for Standardisation of the Republic of Belarus, and is adapted from a design approved in a May 1995 referendum. It is a modification of the 1951 flag used while the country was a republic of the Soviet Union. Changes made to the Soviet-era flag were the removal of communist symbols – the hammer and sickle and the red star – as well as the reversal of the colours in the ornament pattern. Since the 1995 referendum, several flags used by Belarusian government officials and agencies have been modelled on this national flag.

Historically, the white-red-white flag was used by the Belarusian People's Republic in 1918 before Belarus became a Soviet Republic, then by the Belarusian national movement in West Belarus followed by widespread unofficial use during the Nazi occupation of Belarus between 1942 and 1944, and again after it regained its independence in 1991 until the 1995 referendum. Opposition groups have continued to use this flag, though its display in Belarus has been restricted by the government of Belarus, which claims it is linked with Nazi collaboration due to its use by Belarusian collaborators during World War II. The white-red-white flag has been used in protests against the government, most recently the 2020–2021 Belarusian protests, and by the Belarusian diaspora.

The basic design of the national flag of Belarus was first described in Presidential Decree No. 214 of 7 June 1995. The flag is a rectangular cloth consisting of two horizontal stripes: a red upper stripe covering two-thirds of the flag's height, and green lower stripe covering one-third. A vertical red-on-white traditional Belarusian decorative pattern, which occupies one-ninth of the flag's length, is placed against the flagstaff. The flag's ratio of width to length is 1:2. The flag does not differ significantly from the flag of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (Byelorussian SSR), other than the removal of the hammer and sickle and the red star, as well as the reversal of red and white in the hoist pattern, from white-on-red to red-on-white. While there is no official interpretation for the colours of the flag, an explanation given by President Alexander Lukashenko is that red represents freedom and the sacrifice of the nation's forefathers, while green represents life.

In addition to the 1995 decree, "STB 911-2008: National Flag of the Republic of Belarus" was published by the State Committee for Standardisation of the Republic of Belarus in 2008. It gives the technical specifications of the national flag, such as the details of the colours and the ornament pattern. The red ornament design on the national flag was, until 2012, 1⁄12 the width of the flag, and 1⁄9 with the white margin. As of 2012, the red pattern has occupied the whole of the white margin (which stayed at 1⁄9).

National flag
Flag of Belarus
Country - Belarus

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Belarus, officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east and northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Covering an area of 207600 km2 and with a population of 9.2 million, Belarus is the 13th-largest and the 20th-most populous country in Europe. The country has a hemiboreal climate and is administratively divided into seven regions. Minsk is the capital and largest city.

Until the 20th century, different states at various times controlled the lands of modern-day Belarus, including Kievan Rus', the Principality of Polotsk, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the Russian Empire. In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution in 1917, different states arose competing for legitimacy amid the Civil War, ultimately ending in the rise of the Byelorussian SSR, which became a founding constituent republic of the Soviet Union in 1922. After the Polish-Soviet War, Belarus lost almost half of its territory to Poland. Much of the borders of Belarus took their modern shape in 1939, when some lands of the Second Polish Republic were reintegrated into it after the Soviet invasion of Poland, and were finalized after World War II. During World War II, military operations devastated Belarus, which lost about a quarter of its population and half of its economic resources. The republic was redeveloped in the post-war years. In 1945, the Byelorussian SSR became a founding member of the United Nations, along with the Soviet Union.
Neighbourhood - Country
  •  Latvia 
  •  Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic 
  •  Poland 
  •  Russia 
  •  Ukraine