After the coup d'etat of 29–30 April 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 the influx from other regions of similar stamps—which would have harmed the Ukrainian treasury—on 20 August 1918 the Hetmanate Ministry of Posts ordered that the Ukrainian state emblem, the trident of Saint Volodymyr, be overprinted on all available stocks of Russian stamps.
It was impossible to do this centrally under the conditions of civil war. Therefore, the application of overprints was carried out by local authorities simultaneously in all postal districts, using whatever technical means were available, often by hand. This led to great diversity in the types and graphic execution of the overprints.
Studies identified 52 main trident types, 68 variants, and 13 printing errors—a total of 133 principal varieties. 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 were produced by speculators abroad. 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 identified these forgeries.