I’d argue that Yak-141 is closer, since AFAIK its tech was stolen sold and used to make the F-35. Note the two-tail scheme of the plane, as opposed to 38’s one tail.

Also, comparing it with the bloatware stupidity that is 35 is soiling the good memory of Yakovlev, but that’s just me.

Not really. Yak 38 was highly specialised plane for use by Soviet Navy - intended and remained a niche project.

While F-35 was supposed to be universal plane for everything.

Soviet VTOL projects were also met with huge problems, as illustrated by this first working attempts (of 4 proptotypes 1 never flied and 2 crashed), but as you can see Soviets recognized the idea had limited use, instead of hamfisting it like the US.