The Tryzub symbol has featured in Ukrainian lands since the Middle Ages, as the powerful state of Kyivan Rus flourished here. A trident symbol has evident in cultures from Europe to India since time immemorial, carried by Poseidon, Neptune, Shiva, Vishnu, and other deities. Plato said a golden trident and azure garments were worn by the kings of Atlantis in his Timaeus written between 360 and 355 BC.
Atlantis is believed to have perished in the Deluge eleven and a half millennia ago that Poseidon was said to have survived. Not all of the terrain of what is now Ukraine was submerged, so there is reasons to assume that the Golden Trident and the colors of the Ukrainian flag – azure and golden – had their origin in Atlantis.
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The trident as the symbol of royal power was inherited by the Scythians who called themselves descendants of the Atlanteans.
The symbolism of the Trident is based on the combination of three basic elements of life in a three-dimensional world. There is, however, an older, pre-Arian metaphysical meaning of the symbol: The Absolute that is omnipresent in the balance of all energies which have two poles – positive and negative, heaven and earth, male and female, which, combined, give birth to a third power – the power of life.
The Trident can be found in ancient Arian mythology. On the way from their homeland in the lower reaches of the Dnipro the Arians shared this life-giving sign with many peoples. In the Indian state of Jammu there is still a temple to the Great Mother Goddess in which a huge bronze statue of the Goddess holds a trident in her right hand. The temple is inside a mountain with three peaks with a Ukrainian-sounding name: Trykuta - literally “three-cornered” or “three-headed”.
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The Trident symbol is found on numerous coins, signs, emblems, seals and other insignia used by the rulers of Kyivan Rus dating from the 10th century AD.
It was on the seal that the envoys of Prince Igor (912-845) used to conclude the treaty with Byzantium.
For Prince Volodymyr (960-1015), gold and silver coins with his portrait and the Trident symbolized and asserted his and his people's power. The Trident was also the main component of his dynasty's coat of arms.
Silver coin of Prince Volodymyr the Great of Kyiv, 990 AD. It as a weight of 3.46 grams (0.02 ounces) and a diameter of 27 millimeters (1.06 inches)
Gold coin of Prince Volodymyr the Great of Kyiv, 990 AD
Prince Volodymyr's Trident on a brick found in the ruins of the Tithes Church in Kyiv in 1908
Having converted Kyivan Rus to Christianity in 988, Volodymyr became married for the last time and began to build Christian churches across the land. In praise of his allegiance and service to the Lord, the Vatican erected a Ukrainian altar in St. Peter's Basilica. The frescoes on both sides of the altar show Volodymyr and his grandmother, Princess Olga, the Trident and the Tithes Church.
Frescoes in the Ukrainian altar in St. Peter’s Basilica, the Vatican
The Trident also appeared on silver coins minted during the reign of Volodymyr's son, Yaroslav the Wise (983-1054).
Silver hryvnia of Yaroslav the Wise, ca 1050
With the feuds among Yaroslav’s offspring almost sank into oblivion , the Trident as an official symbol for centuries, except for the western part of Ukraine where it continued to be used by the Romanovych dynasty.
After World War I, with the beak up of the Russian Empire the Ukrainian People’s Republic (UNR) was declared as an independent state in November 1917, with the Trident being adopted as the republic’s official emblem in February 1918.
State emblem of the Ukrainian People's Republic
The Trident on a 100-hryvnia banknote of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, 1918
Unfortunately, the nascent Ukrainian state was crushed by Russian Bolsheviks and plunged into seven decades of Communist dictatorship and terror, but the unbroken nation looked to the Trident as the symbol of its identity.
The Trident was used by the UNR government in exile, and then by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) that fought against both the German Nazis and the Soviets.
Dmytro Nehrych, UPA sotnyk (commander of a sotnia – Ukr. hundred).
The Trident is on his cockade
The Gold Cross of Valor, 1st Class - the highest UPA award
In the USSR the Trident was discredited in every way and banned as a symbol of Ukrainian nationalism – its use was tantamount to high treason.
In the 1950s – 1980s, the KGB took against hundreds of patriots labeled as “nationalists.” On the night before the May Day holiday in 1966, a handsewn blue-and-yellow flag with a trident and a patriotic slogan painted on it in ink was set up on the roof of the Kyiv Institute of National Economy.
The Trident and slogan on the blue-and-yellow flag torn down from the Kyiv Institute of National Economy, May 1, 1966
On Dec. 30, 1967, a blue-and-yellow flag with a trident appeared on the building of the Kirovsky District Executive Committee in Dnipropetrovsk (now Dnipro), and on Jan. 1, 1984, on the roof of the post office in the village of Demydove, Lviv region. The patriots who were caught in these and a multitude of similar acts were prosecuted and imprisoned - many of them did not survive their lengthy prison terms.
The tide turned when Ukraine finally became independent and the Verkhovna Rada on Feb. 19, 1992, passed a resolution “On the Minor State Emblem of Ukraine”: the Golden Trident on the Blue Shield.
Minor State Emblem of Ukraine
The Major State Emblem has yet to be officially approved, but it is already known and recognizable, featuring a rampant lion (reference to the golden lion on the coat of arms of King Danylo of Halych, the ruler of the West-Ukrainian lands in the 13th century) and a Cossack with a musket (symbolizing the glorious pages of Ukrainian history).
Major State Emblem of Ukraine
During the Euromaidan protests that erupted in Kyiv in the late fall of 2013 and which culminated in the Revolution of Dignity, the Ukrainian Trident became the insignia that distinguished those who stood up for human dignity, civil rights and democracy against authoritarianism and humiliation.
The Trident on an improvised shield and helmets used by peaceful protesters during the Revolution of Dignity (Nov. 2013 – Feb. 2014)
As Russia unleashed its war of aggression against Ukraine, first in Crimea and then in the Donbas it made a point of physically destroying Ukrainian symbols and persecuting the Ukrainian patriots who carried them.
In April 2014, Stepan Chubenko, a 16-year-old high school student from Kramatorsk in the Donetsk region, was killed for having a blue-and-yellow ribbon in his backpack.
A few months later, in August, Hennadiy Khytrenko, a member of the village council of Krymske in the Luhansk region, was shot in his own yard after a Ukrainian flag with the Trident was found in his house by a Russian paramilitary.
Volodymyr Balukh, a resident of a small Crimean village, received a long prison term in the fall of 2014 after he refused to remove the Ukrainian flag from the gate of his house - he is still held in a Russian prison.
During the following three years alone, more than 50 cases of execution and torture of pro-Ukrainian civilians were documented while many more remain unproven. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2024, the number of such cases has grown exponentially.
Tattooed, embroidered, painted, drawn or printed – the Ukrainian Trident almost certainly will inevitably lead to inhuman torture for those who fall into the hands of Russian invaders, military and civilians alike.
One of the most graphic examples is Vasyl Pelysh from the small town of Stariy Sambir, in the Lviv region. In the spring of 2014, having just turned 20, he volunteered for the Donbas front. In August near Luhansk, the Russians captured him, the one APC crewman who survived a landmine blast. The man hates to recall the long months he spent in Russian captivity where he lost his right arm almost up to the shoulder before he was swapped and taken to hospital in Kyiv.
“I was unconscious when they captured me, but conscious when they were sawing off my arm on which I had a tattooed trident,” Vasyl told doctors. Luckily, he got a prosthetic arm, a gift from Canada. When Canadian prosthetic specialists brought it to Kyiv and he tried it on, he was surprised and deeply moved to see they had place the Ukrainian emblem on it.
Vasyl Pelysh with the Canadian prosthetic arm complete with Tryzub
Now, as this country suffers one of the hardest periods of its history, its national symbols assume a very special and extremely important meaning, consolidating Ukrainians around the national idea of independence with liberty and justice for all.
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