Postage stamps…an unconventional weapon in 2022

Mohamed Abdel Hamid04/21/2022

25 One minute

Postage stamps and war

Over time, the postage stamp has lost much of its primary function as a means of payment for postal services. However, it has not lost its other, older function, which began with the printing of the very first stamp: propaganda. This refers to propaganda of all kinds—political, cultural, economic, touristic, and so on. Here is a vivid example: in the midst of the Russian-Ukrainian war, the Ukrainian postal service decided to issue a stamp bearing the image of the Russian cruiser "Moskva"—the jewel of the Russian navy and the most important vessel of the Russian Black Sea Fleet—facing it with a Ukrainian soldier raising his middle finger, a message essentially saying "Go to hell." A unique coincidence occurred: the Russian cruiser was indeed sunk shortly after the stamp's release, transforming the postal item into an icon of a war whose battles were still being fought on land. The lesson remains clear as we witness the long queues outside Ukrainian post offices of people eager to purchase this stamp until the stock ran out and the authorities decided to print more. The lesson is clear and understandable: the tools of war are not limited to conventional weapons.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, for his part, used social media to promote the commemorative stamp, using sarcastic phrases with an envelope bearing the same image.

Agence France-Presse quoted Yuri Kolesan, 24, who waited two and a half hours to buy 30 copies of the postage stamp, as saying, “This ship was the largest Russian ship, worth about $750 million. They had pinned all their hopes on it, but we destroyed it for them.”.

On the first day of the Russian attack on Ukraine, an audio recording of a radio conversation between Ukrainian soldiers and the ship “Moskva” was released, in which Ukrainian border guards on the small Snake Island told the Russian destroyer, which was urging them to surrender: “Go to hell!”.

This recording achieved widespread popularity around the world and became a symbol of the Ukrainian resistance, even appearing on banners during support demonstrations abroad and now appearing on stamps.

According to Agence France-Presse, the Ukrainian postal service launched a competition at the beginning of last March to depict this incident through a postal survey.