In Daugavpils, some individuals appeal to the sanctity of the city's flag during wartime. Meanwhile, individuals in power in Russia are resorting to distorted historical facts, thus attempting to justify the horrific crimes they are committing in Ukraine. Historical interpretation, of course, always exists and a completely objective view of it is almost impossible, but there are facts that are true and those that are not.

BNN spoke this time with the curator of the University of Latvia (LU) Museum collection and history doctoral student at the LU Faculty of History and Philosophy, Rudolfs Rubenis, who is also an active member of the student corporation Latvia.

Commenting on what happened in Daugavpils after the city flag at a school was replaced with the Ukrainian flag, thereby expressing solidarity with a country suffering from the war, the historian says: "There is a part of society for which that flag really symbolises something positive and there is a part for which it is a negative symbol. This is the part of society that sympathises with the Russian side in the current Russia-Ukraine war. If the flag of Russia's enemy is hung in public, then for them it symbolises a provocative act on the part of Ukraine's supporters." (...)

If we talk about the Ukrainian flag, which is light blue and yellow, it was first flown in 1848 in Lviv, which was once part of Austria-Hungary, and it was raised by nationally minded revolutionaries to express that Ukrainians were a political nation. The 19th century was the era of nationalism. Academically educated intellectuals, who were shaping the political nation, played an important role at that time.