 | |
| Use | National flag and ensign    |
|---|---|
| Proportion | 1:2 |
| Adopted | 25 December 1951 (Soviet version) 7 June 1995 (original design with a thinner ornament pattern)[1] 10 February 2012 (current design with a thicker ornament pattern)[2] |
| Design | A unequal horizontal bicolour of red over green in a 2:1 ratio, with a red ornamental pattern on a white vertical stripe at the hoist. |
| Designed by | Matrona Markevich (original ruchnik design) Mikhail Husyev (original Soviet variant) Alexander Lukashenko (current variant) |
The national flag of Belarus is an unequal red-green bicolour with a red-on-white 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.