Crimea

Crimea, or Крим (Ukranian), or Krym (Russian) is a republic of the Russian Federation on the Black Sea. It has been Russian since the 2014 invasion by Russian forces took it from Ukraine.

While it is real, it does not and never issued its own stamps in recent times. The stamps supposedly being issued by it are not real despite the regime change and the few weeks it was supposedly independent. At the time of this writing, they will be using Russian stamps today. Beginning in the early 1990s, old Soviet stamps were surcharged with КРЫМ in spite of the Crimea being part of the Ukraine. The counterfeiters used old Soviet geography books, perhaps. Various topical sheetlets, etc. followed, inscribed trilingually probably because the words are short and fit on their bogus stamps nicely.  File:Crimea surch.jpg|two different bogus oveprints means more money for the fakers. File:Crimea Europa.jpg|Imperf se-ten pair. Somebody's got a wicked sense of humor. File:Crimea trees imperf.jpg|Ooooo, imperf! Nice touch for a bogus stamp. 

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