When a section of the Kerch Bridge connecting mainland Russia to the Crimea was blown apart last Saturday morning, it wasn’t the definitive strategic blow many assumed it would be. Indeed, the bridge was operational again (at least in part) by the very next day. What it did achieve, however, was a tremendous symbolic blow to Putin that was felt and celebrated across the western world.
It was a monumental moment in a horrific war that seems to be reaching a dangerous new zenith as we speak. But I’m not here to talk about that. I’m here to talk about the (admittedly conveniently fast) postal stamp campaign that emerged in Ukraine on the back of the explosion.
Wish you weren’t here
Within hours of the explosion, Ukraine’s Post Office released a new stamp celebrating the event in spectacularly brazen fashion. The campaign includes several designs including a visage of the explosion itself and a very cheeky analogy between the bridge and the hubris around the sinking of the supposedly unsinkable Titanic.
The real question, however, is not whether Ukraine were responsible for the explosion but whether celebrating such an act (that claimed the lives of three people) should be used as a campaign promoting Ukrainian resistance. My answer? Honestly, I think that given the atrocities committed by Russian forces over the past seven months, it’s actually oddly comforting to see a government standing behind something with so much defiant “fuck you” attitude.
I’m not here to debate the intricacies of modern warfare or if there “really can be any such thing as good guys and bad guys in war,” I’ll leave that to The Guardian and The Times. Here, we’re all about the creative and to see such a bold and incendiary piece of creative come out of a potentially historic event moments after it happened just goes to show how fast and furious us creatives can be given the right conditions.
Call it part of an ad campaign for the Ukrainian uprising, if you wish, but it’s far from the first time a historic moment has been featured on a postage stamp. It’s just the first time it’s happened on the same day as the moment itself. And that is truly something worth admiring.
