Pro-Russian social media accounts have been circulating an image of what they say is a Ukrainian postage stamp showing a Ukrainian veteran who fought alongside the Nazis in World World II. It turns out, however, that this isn’t a real stamp.
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Several pro-Russian social media accounts have claimed that the Ukrainian authorities printed postage stamps featuring Yaroslav Hunka, a Ukrainian man who joined forces with the Nazis during WWII.
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Hunka’s name has been in the media because the 98-year-old was invited to visit the Canadian House of Commons on September 28 during the Ukrainian President’s visit to Canada. Hunka was given a standing ovation by Canadian members of parliament, who mistakenly thought he had fought against the Nazis, not with them. After the truth emerged, Speaker of the House Anthony Rota resigned.
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It turns out that the Ukrainian post office does not have a stamp featuring Hunka.
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What's more, all Ukrainian stamps have the name of the country written in Cyrillic, but there is no such lettering on this stamp – another clear indication that it isn’t real.
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There is also a bar code on the image that when scanned links to a site featuring an official stamp commemorating the war in Ukraine, with no mention of Yaroslav Hunka.
The fact check, in detail
On September 22, when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was visiting Canada, the Canadian House of Commons clapped for veteran Yaroslav Hunka, who they thought was a Ukrainian-Canadian veteran of WWII who had fought for the Allied forces. However, soon after the incident, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a global Jewish human rights organisation based in Canada, reported that Hunka had served in a Nazi SS unit during the war. Once informed of the error, the Canadian House of Commons apologised for its error and the House Speaker, Anthony Rota, resigned on September 26.
The Kremlin was quick to exploit this error. The Russian government has been justifying their invasion of Ukraine by claiming that the Ukrainian authorities are Nazis.
On September 27, pro-Russian accounts began to circulate an image of a postage stamp featuring Yaroslav Hunka, claiming that Ukrainian authorities had just released it. The image garnered 375,000 views on X, formerly known as Twitter, and was also shared on Facebook.
The social media accounts of a number of Russian embassies also shared images of the stamp – including in Kenya and the United Kingdom. (The Russian embassy in the UK later deleted their tweet featuring the fake Hunka stamp, but you can see a screengrab of the tweet here).
A fake stamp
The website of the Ukrainian post office features images of all of the stamps in circulation. There is no sign of the Hunka stamp and, if you run a keyword search on the site for“Ярослав Гунька” (“Yaroslav Hunka” in Ukrainian), you get zero results.
Moreover, all of the stamps featured on the post office website have “Україна” ("Ukraine" in Cyrillic) on them. The Hunka stamp does not.
Moreover, all of the stamps printed since the Russian invasion also feature the name “Ukraine” written in the Latin alphabet as well. The Hunka stamp doesn’t have this on it, either.
It’s also strange that the bar code in the upper right is cut off.
The numbers “4823027150765” appear alongside the bar code.
If you type this code into a search engine, then it will pull up links to another Ukrainian stamp for sale on Ebay, Amazon and the Ukrainian post office.
However, this stamp doesn’t feature Yaroslav Hunka – it shows a modern Ukrainian soldier. The stamp comes mounted on a background showing ruins in the city of Mariupol, a woman with a baby, abandoned suitcases and a pram.
This commemorative stamp was released by the Ukrainian Post Office on August 24, 2022, which marked six months since Ukraine had been invaded.
The image of Hunka that appeared on the fake stamp is a still from the video showing Hunka’s appearance at the Canadian House of Commons. The frame appears at around 0’50 in this video published by a British media outlet.
Fake news about stamps
It’s not the first time that pro-Russian propagandists have circulated images of fake stamps.
Back in April 2023, pro-Russian social media accounts circulated images that they said showed Ukrainian stamps honouring the Galicia division, a unit of the SS that was primarily made up of Ukrainians. The Georgian fact-checking outlet Mythdetector reported that the stamps were not official stamps released by the government, but were designed by a group of amateurs. The images of those stamps were also posted by the social media accounts of a number of Russian embassies.
Another story about stamps made the rounds in May 2022 when certain accounts shared images of what they said was a Polish stamp featuring the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a pose that made him look a lot like Hitler.
It turned out that a municipal councillor in Krakow had designed the stamps. Our team actually interviewed him. However, the stamps were never officially released.
