Ukraine Commemorative Notes and Coins

The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) has unveiled a commemorative banknote to mark the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion.

One side of the vertically orientated note depicts three soldiers raising the national flag. The other features an image of two hands tied with tape, an allusion to alleged war crimes Kyiv has accused Russian forces of committing in Ukraine.

The NBU will place 300,000 of the commemorative notes into circulation. It took eight months to design and produce the notes, which incorporate SPARK®, an embedded thread, a 12mm wide optically variable stripe and an iridescent feature.

According to the NBU, it plans a series of commemorative notes to provide a visual record of the war, and is already planning new notes to commemorate victory and Ukraine’s reconstruction.

Separately, a commemorative 5 hryvnia coin celebrating 30 years of Ukrainian independence has been voted the overall winner in the Coin of the Year (COTY) awards. The 2023 programme honours coins dated 2021 in 10 categories of competition as decided by an international panel of over 100 judges.

The winning coin, which won the Most Artistic category, features storks flying over a field using traditional Ukrainian textile patterns on the front, and an embroidered band resembling a strand of DNA, symbolizing the nation’s code, on the reverse.

The coin was the overall winner by a large margin, securing 30% of the total vote, more than double those of its closest competitor. ‘It is very unusual for the overall COTY Champion to win by that large a margin,’ said Thomas Michael, COTY coordinator.

The NBU also won the Best Contemporary Event awards for its 10 hryvnia coin commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Ukrainian constitution.

NBU Governor, Andriy Pyshnyi, unveiling the new commemorative banknote in Kyiv.