For anyone who blinked and missed Russian President Vladimir Putin's swift seizure and annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region, there's now a giant silver coin celebrating the Kremlin leader for bringing the territory "back home."

The coins issued by the Art Grani foundry in the Russian city of Chelyabinsk feature Putin's bas relief image on one side and a map of the Crimean peninsula on the other.

"Crimea's reunification with Russia was a historic event which we decided to embody in a souvenir collection of coins," Vladimir Vasyukhin, director of the Ural Mountains foundry, told the Itar-Tass news agency.

Vasyukhin last year visited Crimea and returned with fond memories of the peninsula, Komsomolskaya Pravda reported in its article Tuesday about the new coins.

"And just like that the peninsula has come back home to Russia," Vasyukhin said of the annexation last month. He added that with the recovery of the territory, Putin had "demonstrated the qualities of a wise strategist and politician."

The unilateral annexation has been condemned by most world powers as a violation of international law in changing another country's borders by armed force.

The first issue of 25 of the commemorative coins, which are the size of a hockey puck and weigh 2.2 pounds each, will be given to Kremlin officials, Itar-Tass said.

Neither the foundry nor the Russian news sources that wrote about the special "Crimea 2014 Collection" said how much the coins will cost or when a broader quantity will be available to collectors and the general public.

To read the complete article, see:Russian foundry issues coin celebrating Putin's Crimea seizure(www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-russia-crimea-putin-coin-20140422,0,2055770.story#axzz306IKeoyx)

To read the complete articles, see:
Putin's Crimea seizure: the coin(www.theage.com.au/world/putins-crimea-seizure-the-coin-20140423-zqy08.html)
Putin's face appears on coin marking Crimea's annexation(www.thejournal.ie/putin-coin-russia-crimea-1428918-Apr2014/)