A new stamp honors the Ukrainian soldiers who profanely told off a Russian warship

Ukraine introduced the design for a new postage stamp that memorializes a now-famous battle cry rallying the country in its fight against the Russian invasion.

The stamp — called “Russian warship, go f*** yourself!” — references an interaction on Snake Island.

The Ukrainian Postal Service (Ukrposhta) announced the stamp design after holding a public vote on social media for a postage stamp competition meant to commemorate the soldiers who defended a military outpost on the island last month.

According to an interpreter for NPR, the artist of the winning design, Borys Grokh, told Ukrposhta he was so impressed by the soldiers’ refusal to surrender that he decided to submit an illustration to lift morale.

It took him three days to complete the sketch and, if he hadn’t been distracted by the news, he could have created it in five hours, he told the postal service.

Grokh used to live in a city on the Crimean peninsula, just east of Snake Island. He is now in Lviv, in western Ukraine.

The soldiers may be alive

The soldiers had been stationed on the island, which is in the Black Sea south of Ukraine’s mainland, and used the choice words when Russian naval forces told them to surrender.

The soldiers may still be alive, officials have said.

An interpreter for NPR says the famous phrase quite literally translates to English as an expression that doesn’t quite exist in English.

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.