Kuril Islands

The Kuril Islands, or Курильские острова, is a chain of islands from the Kamchatka peninsula to Hokkaido (Japan). The chain is part of the Russian Federation.

While the islanda are a real place, it does not issue its own stamps; the stamps supposedly being issued by it are not genuine. At all. Beginning in the early 1990s, old Soviet stamps were surcharged with КУРИЛЬСКИЕ ОСТРОВА or '''О. КУРИЛЬСКИЕ''', that included various topical images. Topical sheetlets, etc. have followed, inscribed as above plus КУРИЛЬСКИЕ ОСТРОВА РОССИЯ or КУРИЛЬІ. There are also bilingual inscriptions with KURIL ISLANDS. If you had any doubts about the motivations of the fakers/counterfeiters, one of them released twenty dogs sheetlets in 1999, each with the name of one of the islands. There are many more islands than that; just you wait.  File:Kuril buttfl.jpg|Nice of them to put the scientific name on this one. File:Kuril map.jpg|hmmm, forgot to put some ridiculous value on this one – or is it just a label? File:Kuril butterflies.jpg File:Kuril dinos.jpg|Entertaining, but still bogus. And just one island? File:Kuril gold.jpg 

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