Ukrinform, Ukraine's national news agency, presented its book Commanders of Victory at Donbas Media Forum 2026, bringing together 22 stories about commanders and their units.
Ukrinform Director General Serhii Cherevatyi stressed the importance of telling the public about the efforts of Ukrainian service members to defend the country and shape its modern history in order to counter negative information trends.
"We began this project as a series of interviews. The first was with Pavlo Palisa, who at the time commanded the renowned 93rd Kholodnyi Yar Brigade and with whom I had the honor of serving in the Khortytsia Operational-Strategic Group of Forces. As we worked on all the materials, we realized that publishing the interviews on our website would not be enough. We needed a larger project to preserve the experience of Ukrainian commanders, document the contemporary history of the war and bring it to the public. That is how the idea for the book we are presenting today came about," he said.
According to the agency's head, Commanders of Victory is not merely a collection of interviews with leaders from various branches of Ukraine's Defense Forces, including Kyrylo Budanov, Oleksandr Pivnenko and Oleh Ivashchenko, but also a historical document. He also noted that the project is available online.
Andrii Yusov, a representative of the Defense Intelligence of Ukraine, emphasized the importance of high-quality publications that can serve as gifts and research resources and be made available in libraries and government institutions.
"This is not just a book. It is an entire communications project, both multimedia and physical. Most importantly, it is about people. Ukraine has heroes. Ukrainian heroes are outstanding. We need to talk about them. This matters to service members who continue serving under difficult conditions, to veterans, to growing children and to Ukrainian citizens as a whole. And it matters for securing support for Ukraine around the world," he said.
Yusov added that the world must be continually reminded of Russian aggression.
The book was created by the Ukrinform team, which independently handled every stage of production, from preparing and editing journalistic materials to design, layout and prepress work.
A distinctive feature of the publication is its clasp, which incorporates a cartridge case and a bullet at the end. These elements were specially created for the project by Olha Konoval, wife of Hero of Ukraine Serhii Konoval and Head of the Serhii Konoval Foundation.
She explained that the cartridge cases came from the Serebrianskyi Forest, allowing readers to literally touch an object connected to the war.
"Every cartridge case you hold in your hands has already done its job. It has been spent. I put this element together in a very interesting way. The cartridge case is from an M4A1, while the bullet is from a Kalashnikov rifle. In other words, we combined things that do not go together; this is not a live round," she said.
Read also: Ukrinform to present Commanders of Victory book at Lviv Book Forum
The presentation also featured a panel discussion with people profiled in the book: Pavlo Kurylenko, Deputy Head of the Current Operations Directorate at the Headquarters of the Joint Forces Command; Oleksandr "Pryvyd" ("Ghost"), a sniper platoon commander with the Separate Presidential Brigade named after Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytskyi; and Dmytro Finashyn, an adviser to Ukraine's Minister of Internal Affairs on veterans' policy and a Hero of Ukraine.
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The discussion focused, in particular, on the role of the media in documenting the war and preserving the voices of those directly leading Ukraine's Defense Forces toward victory.
As reported, Ukrinform previously presented Commanders of Victory to cadets at the Kyiv Institute of the National Guard of Ukraine.