This is a question for my fellow Canadians: Have you been able to send mail to Belarus?
I sent an official postcard to Belarus in late January of this year and it was registered without any issue. I sent another in March, and it has now expired without being registered. I did not think much of it until a letter mailed to Belarus as part of a tag was returned to me today, with a sticker claiming mail to this country is suspended. However, the Canada Post website says postal service to Belarus is available.
Before I drive to the post office or spend hours on the phone waiting to speak to someone at Canada Post to inquire, I figured I would ask here in case I am just misunderstanding the list provided on their website.
You can usually get through on their support line fairly quickly, but Canada Post often doesn’t give a lot of detail about routing changes or delays to their support line staff sadly.
Our suspended list is now down to 7, the lowest I’ve seen it since I joined Postcrossing last July.
The only other thing that occurs to me is if the service was stopped because of the Ryanair plane being hijacked by the Belarus gov’t - there have been advisories/sanctions from the EU, UK & Canada not to fly to through Belarus’ air space as a result of that, but if so, I’d still expect Canada Post to say something about that on their suspended/delayed list.
It’s also possible our mail is not being accepted by Belarus because of Trudeau strongly condemning the hijack and Belarus has said it will close its embassy as of Sept 1st as a result of his remarks.
Great questions!
First, I have found the Canada Post site lags in time. It did not note the non-delivery of mail to India, Sri Lanka, in April when flights were suspended. Yet, postcrossers from these countries advised me that mail was suspended, in both directions. Still is, as far as my correspondents are aware.
Second, I have sent 1 official postcard to Belarus. Dec. 16. It just arrived June 13.
Third, I have done some swaps with Belarus. Some have been effective. Some not.
A reminder: last month Belarus redirected a RyanAir plane (Irish), traveling Greece to Lithuania, to nab a voice of opposition. There have been EU sanctions,perhaps affecting air travel.
Interestingly, today I received an envelope for a lottery I won that was sent from Belarus May 23. Rather fast travel, really.
So, to give a more succinct response: I don’t have an answer, only experience. Canada Post is really our ‘best’ source, however unreliable, at times.
Thank you both, I knew about the plane and the sanctions, but somehow had not made the connection. I will call Canada Post to try and get an official answer, and will share here.
That is exactly what mine looked like, except the stamps were cancelled with marker and not the really pretty cancellation stamp you seem to have in Berwick NS! I called Canada Post and they basically had no answer for me, said I should check with Belarus… I asked a Postcrosser in Belarus who said the post there has not officially suspended postal service between our countries either. I have no idea if this is a recent development linked to the plane redirection, or if this has been going on for longer as I only sent postcards without a return address to Belarus before.
Thank you for sharing this @surimabo.
This is a growing concern, as I have recently sent mail to Belarus for various exchanges in the Forum.
I concur with @thepaperglobetrotter - nice Berwick cancellation.
I’ll report here if I get any recent mail returned, so we can continue to compare notes.
Interesting…
Since December I’ve sent about 100 official postcards. Three in that time to Belarus. One made it to Belarus in April. One expired in March and one is travelling for 40 days now.
This is strange, because postcards from Canada have been arriving in Belarus regularly this past year, about 3000 or so per month. We don’t see anything on Postcrossing stats that indicates a suspension or something not working as expected.
If you’ve received returned mail like this, maybe take the postcard to the post office, and talk with the person there. If they don’t see anything on their system that indicates that mail there is suspended, I’d try to send it again.
Thank you @meiadeleite
I did not dare try sending mail to Belarus again since I could get no information from Canada Post, has anyone tried recently? The postcard I sent to Belarus in March was registered today, so I think the suspension must have started after that, but I don’t know if it is still in place.
I have an official travelling to Belarus that’s at 38 days and one travelling from the forum since sometime in March. I’ll report back on whether they get received
My postcard to Belarus finally made it after 147 days. I was sure it was lost, but it looks like mail is moving between Canada and Belarus - although slowly.
I resent the letter that had been returned to sender with a sticker saying there was a temporary suspension of postal service to Belarus two weeks ago and so far so good!
The letter I resent after it was returned to sender with a sticker saying there was a temporary suspension of postal service to Belarus has made it to Belarus! Guess it was just a temporary thing, or a mistake was made by Canada Post when they returned it to me…
