An unusual map of Kyiv is being spread on social networks: a golden six-pointed star is superimposed on a satellite image of Obolon. Its top point is near the Heroiv Dnipra metro station, and the bottom one is in the direction of the Obolon station.
Author: Alexander Khmelnitsky, NANews — Nikk.Agency
Under the image, it is said that the Jewish architect Mikhail Peisakhovich Budilovsky secretly embedded the Star of David in the layout of a large Soviet residential area.
So is there a Star of David in Obolon? The geometric resemblance does indeed exist. But the streets do not form a complete, properly outlined six-pointed star.
In the popular picture, the golden sign is drawn over the satellite image. Some of its parts coincide with the directions of the streets, others cross courtyards, buildings, and residential blocks. If you remove the golden overlay, two complete triangles made of continuous streets will not appear.
So why does the area resemble a geometric pattern? And what was Budilovsky’s relation to it?
Why do the streets of Obolon form unusual shapes
Obolon is located in the north of Kyiv, on the right bank of the Dnipro. Before mass construction, there were floodplain meadows here, intersected by lakes and channels.
In the 1960s-1970s, the territory was being prepared for a new residential area. Millions of cubic meters of sand were poured here, raising the ground level to protect against flooding, roads were laid, and the metro was built. The quarries from which the sand was taken gradually turned into lakes.
A regular rectangular street grid was not suitable for this area.
Therefore, architects used short diagonal highways, V-shaped intersections, and polygonal residential blocks. From above, they resemble honeycombs. Some intersections indeed look like parts of a six-pointed star.
Moreover, the explanation for such a layout has been preserved.
In historical material about the design of Obolon, architects Grigory Slutsky and Yuri Paskevich describe their chosen “free asymmetric composition.” V-shaped intersections allowed for shortening the pedestrian path to metro stations.
Leonid Filenko is also listed among the authors of the overall scheme.
The designers detailed the transport, pedestrian routes, natural conditions, and the location of houses. However, there is nothing about the Star of David in their explanation.
Where did the legend of the secret Star of David come from
On August 3, 2026, Kyiv local historian Kirill Stepanets told this story in a material for the publication “TiKyiv”.
According to him, among researchers of Kyiv’s history, there is a legend linking the unusual angles of Obolon’s streets with the Jewish origin of architect Mikhail Budilovsky.
But Stepanets himself is skeptical of this version. He explains the complex street pattern by the features of the territory, limited by hydraulic fill quarries.
Who first suggested that the Star of David was hidden in the layout is not reliably known. Nor has a historical project drawing been found where this symbol would be marked as the architects’ intention.
Magen David — in Hebrew “Shield of David,” a six-pointed star on the national flag of Israel. It is one of the main symbols of Jewish identity.
For an Israeli reader, the assumption of a secret Magen David in Soviet Kyiv sounds particularly intriguing. In the USSR, Jewish religious and national life was under state pressure, and public expression of Jewish identity often aroused suspicion from the authorities.
However, the Jewish origin of the architect does not necessarily mean that he intentionally used a national symbol in his work.
Mikhail Budilovsky: who he is and what he built in Obolon
Mikhail Peisakhovich Budilovsky was born in 1928 in Radomyshl, in the current Zhytomyr region of Ukraine.
He graduated from the Kyiv Institute of Civil Engineering. Among his teachers was Iosif Karakis — a well-known Ukrainian architect of Jewish origin.
In 1951, Karakis was dismissed during the Soviet campaign against “cosmopolitanism.” This accusation often concealed the persecution of Jewish intelligentsia. Budilovsky organized the collection of student signatures in defense of the teacher. The appeal was called the “letter of thirteen.”
After graduating from the institute, Budilovsky worked at “Kyivproekt,” where he participated in the creation of a number of unusual buildings.
In Obolon, he worked on experimental microdistrict No. 2. Among his works are cylindrical high-rises, popularly known as “corncobs,” supermarket No. 3, and cascading residential buildings near Lake Jordan.
These structures stood out among the usual Soviet panel houses. Some of them used innovative construction solutions.
However, Budilovsky was not the sole author of the general plan of Obolon, so attributing the entire street pattern to him is historically incorrect.
In 1978, the architect emigrated to the USA with his wife Svetlana. In Chicago, he worked at Murphy/Jahn Architects, associated with the famous architect Helmut Jahn.
In February 2022, architectural historian Yevgenia Gubkina published a large interview with Budilovsky. He recalled Kyiv, his teachers, Soviet officials, and work on unusual architectural projects in detail.
Budilovsky did not talk about the secret Magen David in this interview. However, such a question was not asked of him.
In 2026, on his birth date, he turned 98 years old. There is no reliable confirmation of his current status with the editorial office.
NANews — News of Israel | Nikk.Agency
The Jewish history of Budilovsky, confirmed by documents
There is an episode in the architect’s biography that has a direct relation to the Jewish memory of Kyiv.
In the 1960s, Budilovsky participated in the work on a competition project for a memorial to the victims of Babi Yar together with architect Avraham Miletsky and artists Ada Rybachuk and Vladimir Melnychenko.
Their names are preserved under the image of the project in the article by writer Viktor Nekrasov “New Monuments”, published in the magazine “Decorative Art of the USSR” in 1966.
Babi Yar is a ravine in Kyiv where on September 29-30, 1941, the Nazis shot almost 34,000 Jews. Later, representatives of other population groups were also killed here. For Israel, Babi Yar is one of the most important places of Holocaust memory in Ukraine.
For decades, Soviet authorities avoided separate recognition of the Jewish tragedy of Babi Yar.
NANews reported on the first public memorial actions in the publication “Shameful gathering of Jewish and Ukrainian nationalists”: in 1966, the first rally was held in Babi Yar.
There is also another connection between Ukrainian architecture and Israel. Yehuda Magidovich, a native of Uman, became the first chief architect of Tel Aviv. You can read about his fate in our material “Jews from Ukraine: from Uman to the White City”.
So is the Star of David hidden in Obolon?
If you remove the golden outline from the popular image, a residential area with polygonal blocks and diagonal streets remains. Their separate lines allow one to imagine a six-pointed star, but they do not form a complete hexagram.
This can be checked directly on the satellite map: trace the sides of the drawn triangles and see where they run along real streets and where they cross the development.
Architects indeed intentionally created the unusual geometry of Obolon. But the preserved explanation links it to transport, distances to the metro, and natural conditions.
Therefore, there is no basis to claim that Budilovsky secretly inscribed the Magen David into the district’s general plan. Perhaps unknown archival evidence will be discovered someday. For now, we have an urban legend that grew out of the real features of the layout.
And yet, the Jewish history of this area is not fabricated. Budilovsky left his own buildings in Obolon, and in the documents of 1966, his name stands next to the project of the Babi Yar memorial.
This can be established without golden lines on the satellite map.