The art of war: Ukraine’s stamps of approval on Russian setbacks

Long-range rocket launchers, howitzers, anti-tank weapons and surface-to-air missile systems. Also in Ukraine’s arsenal: postage stamps.

At the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin’s warship Moskva instructed Ukraine marines on the Black Sea’s strategically important Snake Island to surrender. The response was blunt: “Russian warship. Go f… yourself.” That defiance was immortalised on an official Ukraine postage stamp depicting a soldier facing the warship, proffering a one-finger salute. Ukrainians queued to buy sheets of the morale-boosting stamp, immediately raising more than $200,000 for the war effort.

Ukrainians queued to buy sheets of these “morale-boosting” stamps.Credit: Shutterstock

A few weeks later, there was an update: Ukraine had sunk the Moskva. Half of the new, six-stamp sheet showed the previous image. The other three: same bird-flipping soldier … no ship visible. And a new word: “DONE”. The stamps became a hit for international buyers, with prices for first-day releases soaring to $US1000 (about $1550) a sheet.

“It’s such an unusual thing for a country to release. People tend to go a bit crazy for things like that,” says Melbourne dealer Fred Diamond of Max Stern & Co, who quickly sold the one copy of each edition he received from a supplier in Lithuania.

A new stamp depicts the stars of the 1997 movie Titanic transposed from the helm of the ill-fated ship to the recently damaged Putin trophy, the Kerch bridge.

Another opportunity to stick it to Russia came earlier this month. Just hours after Putin’s 70th birthday, explosions damaged his trophy, 19-kilometre Kerch Bridge linking Russia with Crimea. A new stamp, to be released next month, parallels the false belief of RMS Titanic’s unsinkability with “the myth that the Crimean Bridge is a symbol of the eternal connection between Ukrainian Crimea and Russia”.

A painting of the stars of 1997’s Titanic, Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, in an iconic moment from the movie, shifts them from the ship’s prow to the edge of the burning bridge. In the final two squares of the nine-stamp issue, another artwork features a Russian road sign underwater with fish swimming by.

As one Sydney collector says of buying the stamps from a Kyiv-based seller, “Given that the average annual wage there is now somewhere below $12,000, it’s nice to add to one Ukrainian’s income.” Meanwhile, national post offices from Croatia to Canada are unleashing their own philatelic firepower with stamp releases showing support for Ukraine.

Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky says the stamps help his nation believe in its victory, “that we will win this war and the occupier will go to the bottom … I am convinced that we will have many more such symbols of victory.”

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