About Day of Unity
Hundreds of Ukrainians join together each year on this day to form a live chain across the Dnieper River in Kyiv to mark the 1919 Unification Act of the Ukrainian People's Republic and the short-lived West Ukrainian People's Republic.
The Day of Unity has been marked as a national holiday in Ukraine since 1999, but the first "life chain of unity" occurred on January 21, 1990, when the country was still part of the former Soviet Union.
The outpouring of nationalism saw hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians stand in a chain that was so long it connected the capital with several other nearby cities.
