On the 35th anniversary of Ukraine’s independence, Israeli Friends of Ukraine, supported by Leonid Nevzlin, presented a collection of 37 postage stamps. I read both compositions by names and plots, checked the Israeli part of the project, and understood.
Author: R.Verter
On August 24, 2026, on the 35th anniversary of Ukraine’s independence, the Israeli public organization Israeli Friends of Ukraine presented, with the support of Leonid Nevzlin, a collection of postage stamps “Cultural Code of the Nation.” The anniversary series includes 35 plots: 28 Ukrainian cultural and public figures and seven episodes or symbols of the war. Two more stamps — about Israeli Friends of Ukraine and Nevzlin himself — were immediately taken out of the anniversary count by the organizers. Therefore, there are 37 stamps, although 35 are dedicated to the anniversary.
Before writing, I did not limit myself to the announcement text. I enlarged both images, read each caption, recounted the portraits and military plots, then compared what I saw with the information from IFU, Ukrposhta, the JGive charity platform, and the NADAV foundation. This simple check changed my view of the project. The most interesting thing here is not the set of famous faces, but its construction: there are no presidents, active politicians, or generals on the cultural sheet; the war is placed in a separate section; Israeli participants in the project are not included in the Ukrainian 35.
I was born in Ukraine in a Jewish family and live in Israel. Therefore, this collection is not a foreign national album for me.
Many of the depicted people are almost unknown in Israel, although the melodies, films, or artistic images they created have long gone beyond Ukraine’s borders. If you simply list the names, the Israeli reader will see a beautiful grid of portraits. If you read why these people are next to each other, it will be a conversation about how Ukraine explains its own independence.
I recounted the stamps: 35 are Ukraine, two more are the Israeli postscript.
The project’s formula looks like this: 28 plus seven equals 35. The number refers to the Act of Declaration of Independence of Ukraine, adopted on August 24, 1991. The Israeli Friends of Ukraine stamp and the Leonid Nevzlin stamp are not included in this sum. This is not a minor reservation: the organizers separated Ukrainian history from gratitude to those who helped release the collection in Israel.
I find this division honest. The patron’s portrait was not placed alongside Taras Shevchenko, Lesya Ukrainka, or Vasyl Stus. The main 35 positions belong to Ukraine — its language, art, resistance, and war. The two additional positions explain where the project came from and who supported it.
Israel recognized Ukraine’s independence on December 25, 1991, and diplomatic relations were established on December 26. Thirty-five years later, the connection between the two countries on the stamps is shown not by a protocol handshake: the Ukrainian trident is next to the Star of David, and the figures are covered with Ukrainian and Israeli flags. For NAnews — Israel News | Nikk.Agency here lies the first important line: Israeli solidarity is included in the story but does not claim a place in Ukrainian culture.
From Skovoroda to Stus: not a school list, but a history of freedom
The cultural sheet opens with Hryhorii Skovoroda, an 18th-century wandering philosopher and poet. In Ukrainian memory, he is associated with inner freedom and refusal to serve the system. Then comes Ivan Kotliarevsky. His “Aeneid” transferred the ancient plot to the Ukrainian environment and is considered the work from which new Ukrainian literature begins in the living vernacular.
Taras Shevchenko is not only a national poet, whose name in Ukraine can be compared in scale of cultural presence to Bialik in Israel. He was an artist, born a serf, and became a symbol of language, dignity, and resistance to the empire. The analogy with Chaim Nahman Bialik helps to understand the public weight of the figure but does not mean identical biographies or historical roles.
Ivan Franko was a writer, publicist, translator, and political thinker. Lesya Ukrainka was a poet and playwright; her stamp is named “Forest Song,” a drama about freedom, love, and the price of human choice. Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky brought modernist psychology into Ukrainian prose. Mykola Bazhan combined poetry, translation, and cultural administration of the Soviet era; his poem “Hoffmann’s Night” is indicated on the stamp.
Further, the literary row unexpectedly transitions into political resistance. Vyacheslav Chornovil was a journalist, Soviet political prisoner, and one of the leaders of the movement that sought Ukraine’s independence in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Vasyl Stus was a dissident poet who died in a Soviet camp in 1985; “Palimpsests,” featured on the stamp, became one of the central books of his legacy. Yevhen Sverstiuk was an essayist, philosopher, and participant in the dissident movement, also having gone through imprisonment and exile.
For the Israeli reader, the word “dissident” here requires clarification. It is not just about a person who criticized the authorities. In the Soviet Union, publishing uncensored texts, defending the Ukrainian language, or protesting political arrests could lead to prison, camp, exile, and a ban on the profession. Therefore, Stus, Chornovil, and Sverstiuk stand on the cultural sheet not next to politicians but next to writers: their political resistance grew out of the struggle for the right to speak and write.
“Shchedryk,” avant-garde, and cinema: names the world often did not call Ukrainian
The musical quartet especially well shows the difference between the fame of a work and the fame of its author. Mykola Lysenko, a composer and creator of the Ukrainian national music school, is represented by the opera “Taras Bulba.” Mykola Leontovych is the author of “Shchedryk.” Outside Ukraine, this melody is more often known as Carol of the Bells, but the name of the Ukrainian composer is remembered by far fewer.
Solomiya Krushelnytska was an opera star of European scale. After the failure of the first production of “Madama Butterfly,” Giacomo Puccini reworked the opera, and Krushelnytska performed the main role in the successful production of 1904. Myroslav Skoryk was a Ukrainian composer of the second half of the 20th and early 21st centuries. His “Melody in A minor” sounds in Ukraine as music of memory and loss, even when the listener does not know the name.
In the row of artists, I first stopped at two identical surnames. Fedir Krychevsky and Vasyl Krychevsky are brothers, but their roles differed. Fedir was a painter and one of the creators of the Ukrainian art school of the 20th century. Vasyl worked as an artist and architect; he developed the state emblem of the Ukrainian People’s Republic of 1918 based on the trident. The Ukrainian People’s Republic was an attempt to create an independent Ukrainian state after the collapse of the Russian Empire — long before 1991.
Next to Mykola Pymonenko, known for scenes of Ukrainian everyday life; Oleksandr Arkhypenko, one of the innovators of world sculpture and cubism; Oleksandr Bohomazov, a representative of the Ukrainian avant-garde; Maria Prymachenko, whose bright fantastic beasts are recognized without a signature; Heorhiy Narbut, who created banknotes, stamps, and state graphics of the Ukrainian People’s Republic.
Alla Horska requires a separate explanation. She belonged to the Ukrainian “Sixtiers” — a generation of artists, writers, and intellectuals of the 1960s who, after the Stalin era, demanded more cultural freedom and defended the Ukrainian language. Horska participated in the human rights movement and was killed in 1970 under circumstances that her associates linked to persecution by Soviet authorities. I consciously separate here the established fact of death and the assessment of its causes: officially, this case did not receive a transparent independent investigation.
Theater and cinema form another chain. Maria Zankovetska was one of the founders of professional theater in the Ukrainian language. Les Kurbas created the experimental theater “Berezil” — not a building, but a theatrical association and laboratory of a new stage language. In 1937, Kurbas was shot in Sandarmokh, a forest tract in Karelia, which became a place of mass executions of prisoners during Stalin’s terror.
Oleksandr Dovzhenko was a director whose “Earth” entered the world cinema canon. Ivan Mykolaychuk played the main role in “Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors” — a film about the culture of the Ukrainian Carpathians, directed by Sergei Parajanov. Pavlo Virsky created the stage language of Ukrainian folk dance, known far beyond the country’s borders. These names were long placed in the general folder of “Soviet art”; the collection returns to the viewer a more precise Ukrainian origin of their works.
The seven stamps of the war begin in 2022, although the war started earlier
The military section consists of seven plots: “Russia’s Full-Scale Invasion“, “Battle for Kyiv“, “Azovstal“, “Snake Island”, “Grain Corridor“, “Liberation of Kherson“, and “Unmanned Systems Forces“.
I would not call this series a brief history of the entire war. Russian aggression began in 2014 with the occupation of Crimea and hostilities in Donbas. The authors chose events of the full-scale stage that began on February 24, 2022.
Battle for Kyiv means the disruption of Russia’s attempt to quickly capture the capital and change power in Ukraine. “Azovstal” is a metallurgical plant in Mariupol, whose underground facilities became the last major defense hub of the city in the spring of 2022. Snake Island is a small Ukrainian island in the Black Sea, whose defense became a symbol of resistance.
“Grain Corridor” speaks not only of the front. After the blockade of Ukrainian ports, there was a threat to grain supplies to countries dependent on food imports. Therefore, the plot is also connected with the Middle East. “Liberation of Kherson” marks November 2022, when the Ukrainian army returned the only regional center captured by Russia in the first months of the invasion.
The last stamp is dedicated to Unmanned Systems Forces — a separate branch of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, created for the use of air, sea, and ground unmanned platforms. For an Israeli, the closest understandable framework is the development of their own drone units and technological intelligence in the IDF. This is only a guideline: the structure of Ukrainian forces and the IDF system are not identical.
In this set, there is no Bucha, the destruction of the Kakhovka HPP, occupied Crimea, and many other key episodes. I do not consider this an attempt to erase them. Seven places force a choice. But the choice shows the authors’ view: they combined the defense of the capital, resistance in encirclement, the struggle for the sea, the impact of the war on world food, the liberation of a city, and the transition to a technological army.
Why the Israeli organization received its own stamp
Israeli Friends of Ukraine, or IFU, has been working since 2014. The organization was founded by Anna Zharova and Vyacheslav Feldman. Its task is to strengthen ties between Ukraine and Israel, Ukrainians and Jews, conduct cultural projects, and help people. On JGive, the organization is registered under number 580594034 and is located in Modi’in-Maccabim-Re’ut.
The verified IFU page on JGive reports that after the start of the full-scale invasion, the organization collected about 1.3 million shekels and sent 120 tons of humanitarian aid to Ukraine on twenty flights. The list includes medicines, first aid kits, bandages, hygiene products, baby food, and camping equipment. After the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, IFU also helped victims in southern Israel and IDF reservists.
For readers of NAnews — Israel News, this bilateral work is more important than a general slogan about friendship. The organization, created to support Ukraine, did not remain a bystander in Israel after October 7. Therefore, its stamp with two flags relies not only on symbolism but also on a specific humanitarian biography.
Leonid Nevzlin, to whom the second additional stamp is dedicated, is an Israeli entrepreneur, publisher, and philanthropist. Before moving to Israel in 2003, he was a shareholder and top manager of Menatep Bank, the Rosprom group, and the Yukos company. In Israel, he founded the NADAV foundation, supported the research center for Russian and Eastern European Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the renewal of ANU — the Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv. He is also associated with the Haaretz newspaper as a shareholder and board member. In the IFU message, Nevzlin is named as the person who supported the creation of the collection.
What the Ukrposhta logo and the letter U mean
On the presented images, under each plot, there is the Ukrainian trident, the name “Ukrposhta,” and the letter U. “Ukrposhta” is the national postal operator of Ukraine, so the closest functional reference for an Israeli is Israel Post, “Doar Yisrael.” This does not mean that the two companies are legally identical.
The design resembles personalized products of the “Vlasna Marka” project. Translation – “own stamp”: the customer offers an image, and the postal operator manufactures a real stamp of the established format. “Ukrposhta” directly states that such a stamp can pay for written correspondence. Therefore, these are not ordinary souvenir stickers.
But I do not equate the personalized IFU collection with a separate nationwide artistic release, the theme of which was chosen by Ukrposhta itself. In the original IFU publication, the catalog number, circulation, format of physical sheets, and conditions for introducing the entire series into circulation are not named. Therefore, the confirmed fact sounds like this: IFU presented a collection of postage stamps with Ukrposhta’s details and a U denomination. A narrower philatelic status should follow from the operator’s or organizer’s documentation, which is not yet in the open announcement.
How to buy the collection and what has not yet been reported
As of August 24, 2026, the Israeli Friends of Ukraine message does not include the price, circulation, composition of the sold set, order opening date, payment methods, and delivery conditions to Israel.
Information about the sale should be checked on the official Israeli Friends of Ukraine Facebook page.
After rereading the two sheets, I see three independent stories in them.
The first is about people who created the Ukrainian language of culture and often paid for it with freedom or life.
The second is about the war, shown through defense, the sea, food, liberation of territory, and technology.
The third is about the Israeli organization and patron, thanks to whom these plots appeared on postage stamps.
It is precisely the separation of these three lines that explains why the project title mentions the number 35, while there are 37 images before us.