Type 1.
After the coup d'etat of April 29–30, 1918, and the coming to power of Hetman P. Skoropadsky, the People's Republic was abolished, and Ukraine was proclaimed the Ukrainian State. The Ukrainian postal administration had substantial stocks of such stamps. In order to use them and prevent identical stamps from other regions from entering circulation—which would have harmed the Ukrainian treasury—on August 20, 1918, the Hetmanate Ministry of Posts decreed that all available stocks of Russian stamps be overprinted with the Ukrainian state coat of arms: the trident of Saint Volodymyr.
It was impossible to do this centrally under the conditions of civil war. Therefore, the overprints were applied by local authorities simultaneously in all postal districts, using whatever technical means were available, often by hand. This resulted in great diversity in the types and graphic execution of the overprints.
Research identified 52 main trident types, 68 varieties, and 13 printing errors—133 principal variants in total. The overprints were made in six postal districts: Kyiv, Poltava, Kharkiv, Katerynoslav, Odesa, and Podillia.
Ukrainian provisional postage stamps began to be forged as early as late 1918 in Southern Ukraine, and later counterfeiters abroad produced forgeries as well. They forged overprints and postal cancellations and even created non-existent denominations, so-called "fantasy" issues. The Union of Philatelists of Ukraine in Germany successfully detected these forgeries.