Today, I had a letter returned to me that I had sent from here (Germany) to Belarus two months ago. I am confused by the stickers on the letter as they are from USPS and it says that mail service was suspended (which was and is not the case between Germany and Belarus to my knowledge). Does anyone maybe have an explanation for this? 
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Maybe it had been missent to the US and, as they had the service suspended, could not forward it. I cannot think of any other constellation of what has happened with that envelope, curious if anyone has another idea.
Did your post office read only the US part of Belarus?
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It does look like it was missent to the USA. Though I would have thought it had a stamp on it saying sent there in error, or similar wording.
I have had envelopes returned to me before, with ink stamps on them saying āreturn to senderā and āsent to [ā¦] in errorā or similar wording. One envelope I sent to a friend in USA, it went to Norway! We wondered why it had not been received! 
Sometimes post goes on adventures.
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Maybe if you take it to your regular post office they can explain what happened or at least put it back into the mail system for you without any extra charge.
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Thank you all very much for your suggestions! I also had the suspicion that it had been missent to the US due to the USPS sticker and the explanation that the machine only read the āUSā part of āBelarusā seems plausible to me. And I will take it to the post office and see what they say about it
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Good luck. I would be interested to hear what they say, if you want to tell us, of course.
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yes, the letter was mis-sent to the usa. go to the post office and show them as there might be some hidden barcodes put on the envelope that you can not see and so do not know if the german post system is totally machine sorted and might mis-read those hidden barcodes and sent back to you.
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Most likely the machine misread the country as US, due to the red envelope.
Hereās That Dad Guy explaining why you shouldnāt use red envelopes:
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Have you tried scanning the stamp, with the Post app? It will tell you to which country it was sent, then you know for sure
Thanks for the video on red envelopes! I know in theory that I should not write the address on them, but I was a bit like āit has worked so many times beforeā on that day 
but when it didnāt arrive at my penpalās, my first thought was that it must have been the red envelope!
As for tracking the stamp, that is a great idea! Unfortunately, the app says that there is no information on the status of the letter when I scan the stamp.
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