I think they simply can’t support actions that are against the blockade/sanctions. In Finland violation of sanctions legislation is criminalised, you can get a fine if you try to violate these blockades. I can send to Germany, but if there is a mail to Russia, via Germany, it’s clearly an attempt to get mail there.
(Sorry, I don’t know the correct words but for me it’s clear they can’t encourage such actions and/or provide this forum as a platform for such activities. Could they even get in trouble themselves being a part of that “chain” by offering the usage of this forum to organise circumventing the sanctions.)
I’m sorry but I think in the case of the USA you are wrong about this, and it’s merely a USPS service suspension, as indicated here: International Service Alerts - Newsroom - About.usps.com. A USPS service suspension is not the same as an embargo.
In fact there are several private shipping companies still openly sending parcels from the USA to Russia for online purchases, et cetera (they just aren’t allowed to ship military equipment or “sensitive” cutting-edge technologies.)
I can find absolutely nothing to suggest that it’s currently illegal for Americans to send mail to Russia by other means, such as using a private service or having it forwarded by someone in a third country, or by the UN. USPS just can’t get it all the way to Russia, because they don’t have direct flights there.
@Tara_Bell and @Angelthepup22 - There are plenty of posts still up around the forum about using the UN postal system to send mail from the US to Russia and lots of posts about people having help from an intermediary Postcrosser in Germany to forward mail (with permission of the recipients, of course). I think the post @Angelthepup22 is referring to was pitched as an “experiment” and though I didn’t report it I did see some problems with people skirting the block by sending “via” other countries without any compensation for the foreign postal systems they were taking advantage of. The USPS could pay, say, Germany to be an intermediary for US mail since there are not currently direct flights to Russia because of sanctions due to the war, but they have decided not to do that so we have the mail block as a kind of cascading consequence (the USPS doesn’t have a sanction against Russia, but the previous method - flights from the USA to Russia - is sanctioned). Sending “via” another country is cheating a foreign postal system, which is pretty shady and definitely against Postcrossing policy to not pay proper postage for your mail.
The “postcard forwarding experiment” looked so suspicious to me, no information what happened if they can’t send the mail, will senders be notified if their mail isn’t sent etc. and looked to me it’s great risk that they only want the postcards.
That member is not here, at least with the same name, anymore. I asked normal questions, that they didn’t want to answer. There was no information about this person.
I think it’s so sad not to be able to send to Russia, and I do understand wanting to keep connection, but then there are people who see that as an opportunity to benefit themselves.
@S_Tuulia - I think the one you are referring to was a different post - I DID report that one (where someone was encouraging no postage whatsoever). The post in question here was specifically about routes for mail from the USA to Russia during the mail block.
Precisely- there is no embargo on private mail to Russia. There are sanctions on commercial activity with Russia, such as commercial flights. The USPS doesn’t operate their own airplanes but rather pay to have international mail transported by passenger airlines and due to the lack of flights at the moment, service is temporarily suspended.
Further, there’s not even an embargo on people traveling from the USA to Russia! The US State Department advises against it, but I’ve researched it and it appears that if someone in Russia invites an American to visit, they can apply for a visa, and if the Russian government approves the application they can enter the country. However, they’d need to travel through a country that still allows flights to Russia, such as Turkey or the UAE.
I agree with you here, and in other forum threads I have previously mentioned that anytime I have sent postcards “via Germany” I add a German stamp as well to show that the Deutsche Post has been compensated for their portion in delivering the mail.
I can understand if recommending doing that without paying additional postage should be discouraged. However, the rest of the data within the original post surrounded sending to Russia and using the services of other postal administrations, which would be paid for their portion in delivery, such as sending via the United Nations in Geneva or Vienna, or the Royal Mail Special Postmark division in the UK.
It should also be noted that in the course of the experiment, postcards were mailed from the USA to Russia without any intermediary, and still arrived despite the service suspension. Therefore, we can conclude that the US Postal Service is, in fact, paying another postal operator to forward mail to Russia, but it is likely that the economics of it are unfavorable and that is why they don’t advertise the ability to send mail to Russia.
I think this type of conclusion is precisely why that post was shut down. The first thing that Postcrossing uses for updating the postal monitor is
And that thread became a lot of people speculating and citing anecdotal evidence after purposefully and knowingly going against the current official USPS statement. The official USPS stance is currently no mail route from the USA to Russia. With extra steps and expense to the sender (i.e. UN Geneva or the German postal system) sending mail appears doable consistently but I can understand why Postcrossing doesn’t want their forum used as a place to encourage going against official statements from postal systems around the world.
I for one found the information in that thread really helpful, as there are a lot of times when mail between two countries is suspended for non-political reasons (such as when USA stopped sending mail to Australia a couple of years ago simply due to a lack of flights). There are several places that Australia doesn’t send to right now simply due to logistical reasons, and because of the helpful info in that thread I have ordered stamps from the UN to be able to send mail to some penpals.
I totally agree with you that removing that sort of info goes against the stated missions of Postcrossing, and that it would be understandable if you were genuinely contravening an embargo but working around a mail suspension is not the same thing.
There are also many many individual posts on this forum where people are advocating the “VIA GERMANY” method (presumably without German stamps) so having an in-depth discussion of legitimate ways to get around suspensions that actually provide proper compensation to all postal services is surely a much better way forward than leaving people unaware of more legitimate options.
I believe the only reason there is a discussion about mail to Russia here is in an effort to clarify why related content was removed — it’s difficult to understand why the content was removed (or argue that it shouldn’t be) without the context.
Yes, the question I asked about the forum was why the post got removed, and then I asked for clarification about the rules it allegedly violated because I believe the post was entirely within the forum rules.
Yes, this was a good place for the question. And you did get answers. But if you and others want a long discussion about it, this thread isn’t a good place for that.
Unfortunately the right place for the discussion was wrongfully deleted due to what appears to be a misunderstanding. How can I appeal the removal of the thread in question?
“You may not misuse the website for illegal or unauthorized purposes.”
I don’t know what the message was, as there seems to be (or have been) many topics, but each time I see topics where it’s organized some sort of “breaking of regulations”, I feel there could be something wrong. Someone can mistakenly think you have some sort of authorisation to organise the mail routes. Someone can mistakenly think it’s organised by Postcrossing.
It can be simply safest to not let it be there. Or they are thinking more about it, and it’s removed for the moment.
The messages you get when the post is removed are automated I believe, so there is no specific one reason at once. Sometimes when my post were flagged and I asked something, it took really long time (in my opinion ) to get the personal answer.
Will the moderation team be providing a clearer answer on why the thread was deleted or can’t been re-instated? The reason cited above was that it contravened an embargo, but it has now been established that it doesn’t (as there is no such embargo).
There is a lot of speculation from non-moderators here, but that wouldn’t be necessary if the moderators were able to provide clarification for us all to understand.
being a part of that “chain” by offering the usage of this forum to organise circumventing the sanctions.)
) to get the personal answer.