The day of the proclamation of the Declaration on State Sovereignty of Ukraine

On July 16, 1990, the Verkhovna Rada of the Ukrainian SSR adopted the Declaration on the State Sovereignty of Ukraine.

The document proclaimed "the state sovereignty of Ukraine as supremacy, independence, completeness and indivisibility of the power of the Republic within its territory and independence and equality in external relations."

The declaration declared that Ukraine "acts as an equal participant in international communication, actively contributes to the strengthening of general peace and international security, and directly participates in the pan-European process and European structures." The right to own Armed Forces was defined and independence "in solving issues of science, education, cultural and spiritual development of the Ukrainian nation" was established.

The declaration became the first state-legal document in the history of Ukraine that proclaimed sovereignty. For the first time, the word "Ukraine" was used alongside "Ukrainian SSR" as the name of the state. The document continued the traditions of Ukrainian state-building and laid the foundations for the adoption of the Act of Proclamation of Independence of Ukraine.