10 Chervontsev 70th anniversary of the Battle of Stalingrad

Arktikugol Trust — the Soviet-era coal-mining enterprise still operating on the Svalbard archipelago under Norwegian sovereignty — has issued commemorative token coinage for decades, exploiting a quirk of the 1920 Spitsbergen Treaty that permits Russian commercial presence on the islands. These pieces circulate, nominally, within the company settlement of Barentsburg, giving them a technical claim to being legal tender that most numismatists treat skeptically.

The 70th anniversary of Stalingrad fell in February 2013, marking the German surrender of 2 February 1943 — the engagement that cost roughly two million casualties on both sides and effectively ended German offensive capability on the Eastern Front.