Russian Post is a state-owned enterprise that serves the delivery of items of any kind in the Russian Federation. To understand why there are some problems in the mail, it is useful to learn more about how the whole system works.
Mode of operation
Russian Post is one of the largest enterprises in the whole country; it can only be compared with Sberbank. More than 370 thousand people work for it, it includes about 42 thousand branches throughout Russia. The mail processes more than 1.5 billion letters, approximately 50 million parcels and 114 million money transfers during the year.
Each post office has its own opening hours, but in every major city there is a main post office that works around the clock.
Internal mail
Sorting of internal mail occurs in automated sorting centers (ASC). ACS in Central Russia is the largest in Eastern Europe. Approximately 3 million shipments are processed here, which are collected from 5200 post offices.
Automated lines also existed in the USSR. Over time, they became outdated, in addition, new types of envelopes appeared that could no longer be processed with such machines. After the collapse of the USSR, Russian Post worked rather slowly, since all correspondence was sorted manually.
Today, automated sorting centers equipped with various machines are used or introduced for sorting in all regions.
Machines analyze the size and weight of mail, automatically apply stamps for stamp cancellation. For processing, the employees receive only what the machine could not recognize, for example, all items with indiscriminately signed indices.
Based on index information, the machine sorts letters by region.
International mail
MMPO (Place of International Postal Exchange) of Moscow is a terminal to which all mail from other countries arrives. All mail from abroad passes through it without fail.
Here, mail, including orders via the Internet, is inspected by customs at IMGO. Parcels are scanned, and if employees find something forbidden, they open the shipment and draw up an act. The contents themselves are sent back.
Over the past few years, the international post office of Russia has been modernized, but the number of mailings is still growing faster than the mail has time to recruit new employees and expand.
