[2][1] The declaration was affirmed by a majority of Ukrainians in all regions of Ukraine by an independence referendum on 1 December, followed by international recognition starting on the following day.

[3] The text was largely composed during the night of 23 August–24 August mainly by Levko Lukianenko, Serhiy Holovatyi, Mykhailo Horyn, Ivan Zayets and Vyacheslav Chornovil.

[3] The Parliament also voted for the creation of a national guard of Ukraine and turned jurisdiction over all the armed forces located on Ukrainian territory over to itself.

[3] Other than a noisy crowd that had gathered at the Parliament building, the streets of Kyiv were quiet that day, with few signs of open celebration.

The referendum's passage ended any realistic chance of the Soviet Union remaining together even on a limited scale; Ukraine had long been second only to Russia in economic and political power in the USSR.

[12][13][14] On the same day (2 December) it was reported during the late-evening airing of the television news program Vesti that the President of the Russian SFSR, Boris Yeltsin, had recognized Ukraine's independence.

[18] In January 1992, U.S. President George H. W. Bush approved a program of American humanitarian support for Ukraine and the rest of the former USSR, supervised by the Secretary of Defense.