POSTCARD N.175 - UKRAINE

Postcard sent on the 20th November 2024, received on the 30th January 2025.

Postcard image: Irpin, the City of Heroes.  The Central House of Culture 

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The Russian aggression on its neighbour drags on, in a relentless war of attrition that sadly brings to mind the ferocious lunacy of the western front of WW1...countless lives, sufferance, destruction, what for?

I read it on the news that V. Putin  is quoted as saying that that if  D. Trump (who would end it in 24 hours, both before and after his coming to office, of course...) had been in power in 2022, the war would never had started... How come, then? Would the so called Ukrainian Nazis need no denazification then? 

Anyway, today I got a rather battered postcard from Alex from the Ukraine which was hand dated of last August.

For some reason, not hard to understand, for the postmark hails from Slovyansk, in the Donbas region, a place that has suffered badly the burden of the despicable aggression, the cancellation is dated of the 20th November, 

Before arriving at my letterbox it also got some heavy rain on it, for it shows clear signs of having been affected by water, but this could and probably did happen very recently for a letter I had mailed myself three days ago also arrived totally destroyed by water. Blame it on the ongoing storms that have been affecting Europe, because of climate change, that Chinese hoax....

Thanks Alex. I'm very happy to have this postcard on my collection which again bears testimony to the resilience of the valiant Ukrainian civil servants that make the country go on, in spite of all the hardship impinged upon them. Heroes, all of them!

The photo on the postcard is that of the Central House of Culture in Irpin, built in 1954 and clearly an important military target such as all the civilian institutions and homes that the Russian have destroyed since the 25th February 2022, for it was heavily shelled by artillery fire on 17 March 2022, barely one month after the beginning of the invasion.

As far as I could read, in 2023, protective works were carried out in order to minimize the consequences of exposure to winter of the damaged areas of the building, and I hope that it may sometime in the near future be fully recuperated and us for its  peaceful purpose.

On 23JAN2022, just about one month from the start of the shameful Russian occupation, Ukrapost issued the "F" tariff stamp on the top right of the postcard, dedicated to the 2022 Benjing Winter Olympics.

The Ukraine participated on this olympiad with a team of 45 athletes, competing in 12 disciplines.

 Oleksandr Abramenko won the only Ukranian medal: silver in thye Men's aerials copetition in Freestyle skiing.

I cannot find any indication as to the lion's head on the stamp, which was also used on a comemorative coin issued by the Ukraine mint, but statues of guarding lions are quite common in China, so there's probably a connection here.

For three years starting in 2018, Ukraposta issued a series of 3 beautifully illustrated minisheets with stamps dedicated to the Alphabet, each stamp being illustrated with a letter and a an object presumably begining with this particualr character.

The eleven stamps on the 2020 minisheet, issued on 12SEP2020, had each a face value of 9 Ukrainian hryvnia. The stamp on the postcard is illsutrated with a pair of boots, чоботи in  Ukranian.

On 05JUL2019 Ukraposta issued a set of five 8 Ukrainian hryvnia in the series The Beauty and Greatness of Ukraine  dedicated to the Donetsk Region.  The stamp dedicated to the Stone tombs reserve, near the town of  Nazarivka, in the Mariupol region, a nature reserve established on April 5, 1927. Sadly the occupier installed a military base in the reserve, I read... not good news for conservation, I fear.

There are two postmarks 0on the card, One of  Slovyasnk and the one on the upper right corner which calims "Донбас - це Украіна" (Donbas is Ukraine).