Type 3A.
After the coup d'etat of April 29–30, 1918, and the rise 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. To use them and to 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 emblem, the trident of Saint Vladimir.
It was impossible to do this centrally under civil-war conditions. Therefore, the application of overprints was carried out by local authorities simultaneously in all postal districts, using the available technical means, often by hand. This led to a great variety of types and graphic styles of the overprints.
Research identified 52 main trident types, 68 variants, and 13 printing errors—133 principal varieties in total. 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 counterfeits were produced by speculators abroad. They forged overprints and postmarks and even created nonexistent denominations, so-called "fantasy" issues. The Union of Philatelists of Ukraine in Germany successfully identified these counterfeits.