The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) put a new 2,000 hryvnia banknote into circulation on September 4, featuring the Ukrainian poet Vasyl Stus, the central bank said on its website.
The NBU first presented the design of the banknote on July 10. It chose September 4 for the note's release because the date marks the anniversary of Stus's death.
The banknote also carries a line from a poem Stus wrote while imprisoned, which describes a candle flickering with a dawn that his great-grandchildren would one day call day.
On the reverse side, the note depicts the building of the philological faculty at Donetsk National University, where Stus studied. The design also includes elements inspired by the mosaics of the artist Alla Horska, including the image of a kestrel falcon taken from her well-known Mariupol panel.
Who was Vasyl Stus
Stus was a Ukrainian poet and Soviet-era dissident who was repeatedly arrested for his writing and activism and died in 1985 in a Soviet labour camp. He is regarded as one of the most significant Ukrainian poets of the twentieth century. Horska, whose mosaic work inspired part of the new note's design, was a Ukrainian artist and fellow dissident who was killed in 1970.
Why the NBU issued a new denomination
The central bank said the new banknote was driven by economic factors that have built up since it introduced the 1,000 hryvnia note. Since then, average monthly wages have tripled and price levels, measured by the inflation index, have doubled, increasing the need for larger amounts of cash.
The NBU said the volume of cash in circulation has also more than doubled over the same period. It added that banknotes with a face value of 1,000 hryvnias now account for more than 55% of the total value of cash in circulation.
Introducing the 2,000 hryvnia note is also intended to cut the state's costs of logistics and servicing the cash supply, the bank said.
Design changed after font criticism
On July 15, the NBU said it would update the design of the 2,000 hryvnia note following criticism of the font used on it. Designer Bohdan Hdal, a serviceman, had said the central bank used what he called a "pirated" font, Bickham Script, for the inscription "Two thousand hryvnias" on the note.
Ukraine's other banknotes
The last time the NBU introduced a new denomination before this was in October 2019, when it released a 1,000 hryvnia note bearing a portrait of the scientist Volodymyr Vernadsky. The 500 hryvnia note, which features the philosopher Hryhorii Skovoroda, has been in circulation since 2006.
