Respect for the opposite sex has not often been honored in net rude gestures on postage stamps, but Ukraine more than 125 BEST known one, Gazeta Ukrainy November 18 1994, had this one.
It depicts a soldier with the middle finger up to the Russian warship, over a reference to an incident at Snake Island during the full-scale attack in the first day almost three years ago.
The Russians called to surrender but the Ukrainians replied with obscenities.
The stamp refers to the cruiser Moskva in which Ukrainians later resulted in the sinking of the warship two days following the stamp release; the stamp was out of stock in a week after its release.
It is so important that what remains was handed out to government delegations for Ukraine in the international sphere.
Ihor Smilyansky, CEO of Ukraine’s postal service, Ukrposhta, agrees it was a rather bold move to make.
“It was my decision. I said – whatever the rest of the world dreams, I don’t care what it dreams! That has always been my stand on the issue,” he said to BBC news when asked why he considered it right to challenge Hazel. I know it’s defying philately or philately rules all the rules. But here we’re about breaking the rules.”
Every now and then, Ukrposhta applies the rules to live material, and the quant results of such online surveys are overtly political as well.
That was how Ukraine’s best-selling stamp came into being, showing a Ukrainian tractor towing a captured Russian tank and featuring the popular wartime greeting: Accompanying words, that were said as greeting and introducing the team: “Hi, we are from Ukraine.”
Stamps featuring Ukraine’s famous mine-sniffing dog Patron earned Ukrposhta about $500,000 (£400,000): The greater portion of the money was spent in procuring equipments to clear the mines while the rest were used to fund the shelters for the animals.
Another mural painted by the world-known graffiti artist Banksy on a building that was severely damaged after shelling outside Kyiv helped fund 10 shelters. This stamp depicts another grotesque but repeating Ukrainian phrase – this time, against Vladimir Putin.
Because even if you are in the worst of situations you just have to take it with a grain of salt. And that is why our stamps are sometimes so often created.”
UK based stamp dealers and auctioneer Oscar Young of Stanley Gibbons said that the method of approaching the stamps as focusing on the war is unique in Ukraine.
In general, stamps are not vulgar and are even polite but to deliberately go out of ones way to be rude, to use profanity and be very miming on stamps – these issues are unique, he explains to the BBC.
He said that this frank image on the warship stamp was what became famous and ruffle some feathers when the stamp was launched.
The semi-postal stamps of Ukraine have unique features that have made them favorites with collectors from all corners of the world.
From Gloucester in the United Kingdom, the thirty-nine-year-old Laura Bullivant thinks that a lot of stamps are plain in comparison with Diwali stamp.
They always simple, I guess they are like the Ukrainian thought process, they are strong and they are not backing down to whatever that is coming into their country, she explains.
’What they are bringing to the game at a time of huge worry and awfulness is something that no other country could bring!’
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