Reactions of the coin world on the war in Ukraine

[eurocoin]

The Polish private mint Germania Mint, which develops bullion rounds and bars, as well as legal tender collectors coins for Niue and Malta, released a statement:

The Germania Mint team wishes to express its solidarity with all those suffering from the war in Ukraine. We condemn the act of aggression by the Russian Federation against any sovereign country. Therefore, we made a decision to suspend all cooperation with companies from Russia and Belarus. In addition, we are canceling the issue of further coins from the Interkosmos series*. We apologize to all Collectors awaiting them, but we cannot remain silent in the face of the Russian attack on Ukraine #StandWithUkraine #StopWar

*A Soviet Union-themed series of precious metal rounds.

[<k>]

Well done, Germania Mint.

Putin's only friend is Belarus, or rather Alexander Lukashenko. What a pair they make. They've both gone North Korean.

[eurocoin]

The CEO of Monnaie de Paris, Marc Schwartz, has just released the following statement:

"In solidarity with the Ukrainian people who fight courageously to defend their liberty, the Monnaie de Paris releases a special medal for the benefit of the Red Cross #WeStandWithUkraine".

[eurocoin]

Marie Lemay, CEO of the Royal Canadian Mint has announced the following on Twitter:

The Royal Canadian Mint is donating all net proceeds from the sale of our 2022 pysanka coins, which honours the richness of Ukrainian culture and artistry in Canada, to the Canadian Red Cross's Ukraine Humanitarian Crisis Appeal. #StandWithUkraine

[chrisild]

Good gesture ... and that design is definitely better than what that Polish private mint does. Some weird mix of 19th century and fantasy imaging. As for reactions in the sense of issuing collector coins, I suppose that those mints that issue dozens of special coin types every year are much more likely to come up with something than those that issue relatively few, and make their schedules years in advance.

[THCoins]

For several years i have been a member of Zeno. An international forum devoted to oriental numismatics.
As the website domain Zeno.ru already indicates, it is ran from Russia. In the Soviet era already a lot of valueable numismatic research was done while there was very little interaction between "eastern" and "western" researchers. The Zeno.ru site has certainly given an impetus to this bilateral cooperation and understanding between people bond by their interest in numismatics.

For the 20 year anniversity of Zeno.ru it was planned to publish a festschrift with contributions from people from all around the globe. I also entered a short article. Today a well known western author publicly requested to have his entry withdrawn in the face of the current Russian government actions.

I think i can understand his dilemma. We all are in favor i think of cooperation with russian people whom we can respect and are of good will. But now in the name of the russian people an unjust war was initiated. Certainly we can not hold all russians responsible for the actions of an autocratic dicatorial government. But can we demand from russian individuals they also have to speak up agains the atrocities which are performed in their name and the blatant lies they are told ?
Zeno is not a political platform, but at what point does not taking a stand, looking away and continue bussiness as usual, starts to make you an accomplice ? 
I have no simple answer.

[Figleaf]

Thank you for a balanced and thoughtful post, TH. Of course, there are no easy answers. Life, as always, is too complicated. It follows that we should not tell others what to do, let alone what to think, but we should feel free to air our opinions as opinions and in a non-personal way.

I'll start off that process by saying that I am in contact with Vladimir. We exchanged signals. My mind is at ease on staying in contact. There is far more we have in common that what separates us. I also submitted an article for Zeno's jubilee and I will not withdraw it in the present situation. I cannot predict the future, so don't know if the situation will change.

One element that has always been important to me is the status of the actor. If the government of Hungary, an EU member state, makes a preferential gas deal with Russia at the time the Russian government is openly threatening the EU with nuclear war, is trying to split EU and NATO and EU policy is to isolate the Russian financial sector as a sanction, that is quite different from a ballerina working in the US who supports Putin and refuses to denounce him.

So what is the status of Zeno? Zeno is a web site on historical objects of all times. Its membership is global. It is a platform for people to meet and exchange information. It primarily serves collectors and scientists. WoC has the same status, so maybe Zeno's status can be illuminated by WoC's status. While I am behind the initiative of WoC and I play a role in many of its activities, WoC is not French or Dutch. I have many years of experience with international organisations and I think WoC is like an international organisation. My boss and I would speak with anyone we felt could be useful for our job, in any language we felt comfortable with on any subject we felt could be useful or even just entertaining.

I submit the above as my personal opinion to help people think about this question only. Please make up your own mind and talk about it here whenever you feel like it.

Peter

[charm]

Dear friends, thank you for your opinions, expressed in the way of reasonable discussion.

I'll not discuss any political issues here, or will not claim what are my feelings concerning the current mad world situation.

I only request you to seriously and honestly ask yourself - do you really have all true information about current events and events of last 8 years? What, if there is something that Western community do not know and prefer do not know?
And the second issue concerns of many events in the modern Western history of last 30 years which should be taken into account when we think about the "terrible" Russia now.

Beginning from the middle of 1990s I'm working on building bridges between Western and Russian numismatics and numismatists (and Islamic, and Chinese, and others too), and we have very good achievments on this long way. We all have tremendous benefits from this cooperation. Hope that it will continue further.

With best wishes to all,
Vladimir Belyaev

[andyg]

1. do not fall for propaganda - the truth is out there.
2. just because someone did something we now view as wrong, is not an acceptable excuse to do it again.

3. Above all else - do not forget REAL PEOPLE ARE SUFFERING.

[THCoins]

Dear Vladimir,

Thanks for your response.
I hope the reasonable people will remain able to build bridges and close gaps by talk and mutual understanding.

Anthony

[chrisild]

While I basically support the sanctions that followed the Russian attack on and its war in Ukraine, it is indeed important to keep "government" and "people" apart. We do (or at least should) not drop personal friendships now solely because one of the two is in, say, St. Petersburg while the other is in, say, Paris. Similarly I think that working together, on and for platforms that are not government supported, should be continued.

[Figleaf]

Hello Vladimir,

Thank you for coming in and speaking out. WoC has an atmosphere of hearing people out and respecting other points of view, which includes the right to argue with them. In this way, citizens of countries that are decidedly unfriendly to each other can meet and help each other out here. Like Zeno, we have been building bridges.

Neither Zeno nor WoC is the problem, as I argued above, but both are affected by the horrors happening in Ukraine. It has undermined mutual trust. We must work to see to it that mistrust does not reach the level of Zeno and WoC, the bridge builders. Otherwise, the bridges will fall.

In my opinion that means facing unpleasant truths. Some WoC members live in countries where they can be arrested, lose their job and face other heavy sanctions for supporting the truth. The same is likely true for some Zeno members. We must not demand from them that they make this sacrifice because we can do so without sacrifice. Those of us who can seek and find the truth should do so assiduously, even if the truth is unpleasant.

Truth is, as you note, complicated. That doesn't mean that only those who know the full truth can participate in a discussion, which means there can be no discussion because nobody knows the full truth. The best we can do is seek reliable sources (as many as possible), look at facts and figures, apply logic and (this has become very important in today's world) discard the information of unreliable sources. This brings us back to trust. There are sources of information I distrust. At the top of my personal list are Facebook, Twitter, other operations driven only by money and any state monopoly, especially state television.

I trust Zeno for what it is and what it does. I offer WoC to you as a forum you can trust: chaotic and noisy, but also as insightful and friendly as can be. We can work from that common ground, support our bridges, remaining truly private international organisations.

Peter

[andyg]

Sadly the days of Zeno being international are probably limited, as Putin is looking more and more likely to disconnect Russia from the web (in a Chinese fashion) - it will all be done to stop "fake news" as he puts it.

[eurocoin]

The private mint Mint XXI, with locations in Poland and Ukraine, and their distributor TopWorldCoins will be donating all funds received from the sale of the 2021-dated 3000 francs coin of Cameroon, that was issued to commemorate the Zaporozhian Cossacks, to the Ukrainian military.

[eurocoin]

I had previously missed this one, but the Mint of Poland has also released a medal for the war in Ukraine. It is made of 10 grams of pure silver and has an unlimited mintage.