Mail from Russia

[duncankoller]

I have been notified by a Russian postcrosser that her post office is not accepting international mail. She asked me to register a card she is unable to send. I declined and explained to her the possible reason - increasing western sanctions and airspace restrictions for airmail. Is anyone aware of an official policy of not sending or receiving mail from Russia?

[LC-Canada]

Nothing has changed on Postcrossing yet as Paulo & Ana & the crew are trying to clarify the status of a number of postal systems currently given the invasion.

Here’s her message from yesterday:

Can we still sent cards/letters to Ukraine?

We understand that everyone is a little anxious about their postcards, and whether or not they’ll arrive to their destinations, so I’d like to reassure you all that @paulo, @chieusa and myself are doing everything we can to keep the Postal Monitor as updated as possible, so that Postcrossing’s algorithm does not give out addresses in a place where your country cannot send mail to. Updating the Postal Monitor is the kind of work that involves keeping tabs on dozens of postal services’ channels, …

[cliffside]

My view is send the card. If it’s delayed or returned, so be it. You’ve done your part.

[duncankoller]

Right, I agree and I do, but my point was that the Russian post office is refusing to accept international mail. Was wondering if anyone else had run into that.

[cliffside]

According to this link, there is mail disruptions to Ukraine, but not Russia. But this is a fast changing situation.

USPS, UPS, FedEx Service Alerts on Shipments to Ukraine, Russia and...

[S_Tuulia]

Can anyone check the Post Russia site if there’s information?
(Doesn’t work to me now, but maybe to someone else.)

[anon59195640]

@alina_pilipak Do you maybe know more about the current situation with Russian postal service?

[Aina-the-unicorn]

Hope it helps

Press release of the Russian Post

Dear clients!

Mail has always been a humanitarian channel that connects people, despite the circumstances. We deliver important messages and goods that are valuable primarily from a human point of view, and not only from a material point of view. Therefore, each violation of the mail exchange is an emergency. Very rare and always a last resort.

The pandemic two years ago brought major changes to logistics maps around the world. Flights were canceled, borders were closed, and the load on all transportation capacities was seriously increasing. We made decisions “from the wheels” every hour, developed new transit routes, connected sea shipments, negotiated with carriers from other countries. We did everything to ensure that the postal cargo was delivered, and we managed. Now we will work in this mode again. We promise you that the refusal of delivery will be the last decision.

Delivery times for international shipments will definitely be increased, with closed skies this is inevitable. If mail sorting terminals fill up to critical levels while waiting for dispatch, we will temporarily suspend the acceptance of items. We are negotiating with the post offices of neighboring countries in order to agree on the connection of air mail as close as possible to the Russian border. So it will be possible to minimize the time by reducing the path of goods on highways and railways.

Now we cannot accept shipments to Ukraine, Moldova and Cyprus, these are the decisions of the receiving parties. We hope that these decisions will be reversed and communications will be restored.

Inside Russia, our logistics channels are stable: where necessary, we have rebuilt routes, replacing air transportation with land transportation, and we are making every effort to ensure that situational delivery routes minimally increase the time of postal cargo in transit.

We inform about all the news and changes in the mail exchange on a special page of the Russian Post website ( https://www.pochta.ru/support/no-mail-exchange4). The section is updated daily.

We wish peace to you and your families!
(Google translate)

[Sasquatch]

My honest opinion I would have register it tell them to send it when they can at least you get to see what the picked.

[noname13]

I never register postcards before I received them and I would do the same now.

[Serandypity]

I believe most of the international mail from Russia is carried by plane. European countries have decided to forbid any Russian plane (cargo/freight included) to fly above their territory and land on their soil. Russia has applied these measures to European countries as well as repercussions. While I hope this is a temporary situation, I believe this is sadly not of use to send any mail to Russia… Chances are you won’t receive any either according to where you are based, unless the postcard was already outside of Russia by the time the conflict openly started.

[meiadeleite]

I’m going to close this topic here, so that we don’t have more than one topic on the forum about mail suspensions. It’s harder to keep track of these if they are a bit all over the forum.

If there is an update from a postal service, please do post it on the Mail Suspensions topic (with links to the information), so that we can quickly have a look and update the Postal Monitor accordingly.