The lion was featured on the historic coat of arms of the Kingdom of Galicia-Volhynia (Ruthenia), the Ruthenian Voivodeship and the Western Ukrainian People's Republic.

In modern times it is used generally as a symbol of western Ukrainian lands, notably in Lviv and the surrounding region of Galicia.

[2] On the seal of his son Leo II of Galicia, only a lion without a rider is depicted; the beast stands on its hind legs and turns to the left.

[2] Figures of lions as symbols of Rus are found on silver coins of the Lithuanian prince Liubartas, the last ruler of the Kingdom of Ruthenia (1340–1383), and his son Fedor (1384–1387).

[3] At the same time, on the coat of arms of the city of Częstochowa, the Ruthenian lion occupies an honorable (right) place, because it represents the kingdom, while the Opole eagle is only a separate principality.

However, from the second half of the sixteenth century the Ruthenian lion and the Prussian eagle disappear from the royal seals, yielding only to the dualistic coat of arms of Poland and Lithuania.

a copy of this coat of arms was made by Georg Ortenburg, in which the lion had golden claws, a red tongue and silver teeth.

One of them – Salome-Euphrosyne, daughter of the Kiev prince Roman the Great and sister of the Ruthenian king Daniel, holds the coat of arms in the form of a golden lion on a blue background, which is going to the silver moore.

Along with it, until the sixteenth century, the old traditional image of the Ruthenian lion on the blue shield was used as the land and voivodeship coat of arms, as evidenced by the miniatures on Łaski's Statute of 1506.

Пробудил ся уже й наш лев руский і красну нам ворожить пришлість.

но двигнімся разом, щоби піднести народність нашу і забезпечити дані нам свободи.

The organization's charter of 1892, which was approved by the Ministry of the Interior in Vienna on July 26, 1893, and the Galician Governorate on August 3 of the same year, stated that: "the banner of the society is a Ruthenian lion, the call 'cheer up'".

In 2018, a monument to the heroes of the November Order in the form of a Ruthenian lion was unveiled in Lviv – an allegorical image of young soldiers who shed blood for independent Ukraine.

On November 13, 1918, the Ruthenian lion was approved by the coat of arms of the Western Ukrainian People's Republic (WUPR).

"[16] However, after the Unification Act on January 22, 1919 with the Ukrainian People's Republic, the Ruthenian lion gave way to the trident in Halychyna.

[17] According to Roman Klymkevych, this rock was a "historically unfounded" extension of the coat of arms, a consequence of the transition of Red Rus under Polish rule.

The law of the Western Ukrainian People's Republic cleared the coat of arms of unnecessary "foreign influences, recreated its ancient state form."

During the Second World War, the Ruthenian lion became the emblem of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician), created in 1943 from Halychynian Ukrainians.

They also had the image of a silver Ruthenian lion on the gorget patches instead of the two lightning runes that only members of the Germanic peoples were allowed to wear.