A thousand years of history through its people: warriors and poets, scientists and artists. Pick an era or a field - or just browse.
Click a region to see the people born there.
Europe 27
North America 2
Asia 5
Birthplace by one of the versions (not known for sure)
Region borders: © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL), geoBoundaries; continents: Natural Earth
1887–1919
Led the November Act in Lviv, 1918
At 31, in one night and without bloodshed, his men took Lviv and raised the blue-and-yellow flag over the town hall. Dmytro Vitovskyi, a captain of the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen, led the November Act of 1918 and became the first military minister of the Western Ukrainian People’s Republic.
NewRead
b. 1995
Founder of the Hospitallers battalion
At 19, with no medical training, she set up a volunteer medical battalion and carried the wounded out under fire herself. Yana Zinkevych founded the Hospitallers, and after a 2015 car crash she kept leading them from a wheelchair. By October 2026 the battalion had evacuated over 46,000 people.
NewRead
1925–2015
Underground courier and typist «Ruzha»
When Soviet troops surrounded the hideout, 26-year-old «Ruzha» shielded her commander with her body and lost her left arm. Hanna Popovych was a courier and typist for the Ukrainian underground near Nadvirna; she was captured twice and served ten years in Soviet camps. The film Zhyva tells her story.
NewRead
1996–2024
Journalist who died in captivity
Few journalists dared to cross the front line. She did it at least four times, on her own initiative, with no editor sending her. Viktoriia Roshchyna reported on Ukrainian civilians held by russia. In 2023 she was captured herself, and she died in russian captivity at 27.
NewRead
1926–2003
Science-fiction writer, rights defender
When the KGB took his two typewriters, Oles Berdnyk went 16 days without food, and the head of Ukraine’s Communist Party apologised to him in person. A classic of Ukrainian science fiction, he put Ukrainians among the stars, co-founded the Ukrainian Helsinki Group and was twice sent to camps.
NewRead
1859–1916
Classic of Yiddish literature
The Broadway musical Fiddler on the Roof grew out of stories about Tevye the Dairyman, who sold his milk to summer visitors near Kyiv. They were written by Sholem Aleichem, born in Pereiaslav, a classic of Yiddish literature whose characters live in Ukrainian small towns.
NewRead
b. 1934
Sixtier and People’s Deputy
Censors cut a page out of an entire print run of a magazine because on it he called Shevchenko the founder of the Ukrainian national idea. Mykhailo Kosiv led Lviv’s Prolisok club, stood up to the head of the KGB in prison, and later worked on Ukraine’s Declaration of Sovereignty and Constitution.
NewRead
c. 1526–1608
Prince, voivode of Kyiv, patron
He was called the “uncrowned king of Rus’” and was named as a candidate for both the Polish and the Muscovite thrones. Prince Kostiantyn-Vasyl Ostrozkyi was voivode of Kyiv for almost 50 years and founded the Ostroh Academy and the press that printed the Ostroh Bible in 1581.
NewReadNo one found. Try another word or clear the filters.
