Snail mail: Russia’s postal service tackles parcel backlog

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If you are expecting parcels from abroad, be assured you should finally receive them soon.

­The Postal Service, which has been overloaded, says it is getting on top of the backlog.

Yesterday, the Postal Service announced it had dozens of tons of cargo stuck at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport. Large amounts of cargo from the US were held up at Turkish customs before being forwarded to Moscow.

This overloaded the airport's capacity, driving it to impose an embargo. Deliveries from Hong Kong, China and South Korea have been particularly affected.

Russia’s postal service has long been known for its unreliability and delays.

In February 2012, it was fined $1,000 for delays in urgent deliveries. A Moscow prosecutors’ inspection discovered ten cases of first-class letters that had sat for a week at Vnukovo Airport. First-class post is supposed to guarantee delivery within two days.

In 2010, the country’s mail service was fined for delays in express delivery, and in April of that year it had so many problems with international deliveries that companies such as eBay threatened to blacklist Russia.

The postal service repeatedly caught some of its employees stealing the contents of parcels and replacing them with objects of similar weight. Since January 2010, fraudsters have managed to steal goods valued at more than 1 million rubles ($33,000).