When the Russian warship Moskva told the Ukrainian border guards on Snake Island to surrender, the soldiers told the ship to go fuck itself. Two months later, the border guards are still alive, the Moskva is at the bottom of the Black Sea, and the moment of resistance has been turned into a painting that has become a popular meme. It’s even become a stamp that’s selling for outrageous prices on secondary markets like eBay.
“Russian warship, go fuck yourself,” turned into a popular phrase moments after the Ukrainian Roman Hrybov transmitted it to the Moskva. On March 1, the Ukrainian postal service announced a competition to design a stamp based on the phrase. Boris Groh’s painting of a Ukrainian soldier flipping the bird to a distant Moskva won after being put to a vote on Instagram and Facebook.
The Ukrainian post office turned the painting into a stamp and issued the first run of them on April 13. The next day, the Moskva sank after being struck by a Neptune anti-ship missile fired by Ukraine.
The stamp is now a collector’s item.
Culture wars are a helluva lot more fun than the ones using weapons of mass destruction.
Eideard 
“Russia’s Sunken Warship Is A Warning To All Navies” https://gcaptain.com/russias-sunken-warship-warning-to-navies/
Trolling Russia, Ukraine registers Moskva shipwreck as ‘underwater cultural heritage’ https://www.politico.eu/article/trolling-russia-ukraine-registers-moskva-shipwreck-underwater-cultural-heritage/
The international agreement governing underwater heritage is the UNESCO-led Underwater Cultural Heritage Convention, created in 2001 and signed by 71 countries, including Ukraine. It aims to preserve “all traces of human existence” — including shipwrecks and sunken cities — with a “cultural, historical or archaeological character” found underwater, and create a framework to combat illegal looting.
In 2011, then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin went diving into the Taman Gulf, next to Crimea, and retrieved two ancient ceramic jars. Then in 2014, after Russia annexed the peninsula, Moscow used supposed archeological evidence of proto-Russian kings around Crimea as part of its wider arguments justifying the annexation on historical grounds.
Despite not being a member of the convention, Russia presented UNESCO with a document citing the “protection of cultural heritage in Crimea” as one of the reasons for its move.
2AM MDT, tomorrow morning, 23rd
Ukraine war: Snake Island and battle for control in Black Sea (BBC News) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61406808
Concerns rumbling through the halls of Congress center on whether the United States has done enough to prepare for and deter Russian aggression in the Black Sea region, so that Putin doesn’t end up feeling empowered to strike out further beyond Ukraine. https://www.thedailybeast.com/this-is-vladimir-putins-precious-black-sea-key-to-invading-more-countries
Russian President Vladimir Putin has long been interested in leveraging Russia’s access to the Black Sea to course through other sovereign nations and obliterate their borders. Russia invaded Georgia, which borders the sea, in 2008 and annexed Crimea in 2014. Russia has been attacking Ukraine since 2014, re-invading again this year.
If the United States and allies had stepped up and developed a weightier strategy in the Black Sea region years ago, we might not be facing a Russian war in Ukraine now, according to Ian Brzezinski, the former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Europe and NATO Policy.