Shipping to Russia just got worse

Russians finally learned how to shop online. Several month ago Ebay and Paypal officially started offering services in Russian language and a lot of other big online shops started shipping to Russia in the few last years. That combined resulted in a huge grow of packages from overseas. Last spring Russian Post collapsed cause of too many packages. Airports in Moscow refused to accept any new packages for several days. That got into news and got attention of our government. Idiots in our government (as everybody knows Russian government traditionally is formed by idiots… the most greedy idiots we could find) realized that Russians are spending a lot of money overseas. So they started inventing new regulations that would limit us.

In January 2014 new customs rules were applied to all commercial courier companies. That includes FedEx, DHL, UPS, TNT, DPD and few others. Starting from January those companies would stop delivering packages to private persons. They would continue to deliver to companies, but no more private persons packages. Those packages that were already sent would be delivered.
So we've lost most of the shipping companies.

Now the only options for us are Russian Post and EMS (which is division of Russian Post here). So far no new regulations applied and we are able to import packages up to 1000€ per month without any taxes. But are government is discussing new regulations that would lower month limit to 150€ per month. Everything above would be subject for new taxes.

Just shipped with UPS to Russia and it is fine

DHL have always shipped only to Bussnes addresses.
But did not here anything from UPS yet. I think they continue

I do hope some couriers would continue shipping despite all those statements. Noel from http://www.liogier-france.fr/ sent me a package using fedex without any problems, but still I afraid things would get worse. It might be some couriers are just slower to react.

And I do hope UPS would continue as I have some plans regarding your shop Maxim

According to this http://www.vedomosti.ru/tech/news/22006811/tamozhnya-razreshila-posylki the recent changes in custom processing of packages has been already canceled. In less than a week. So now we coming to what we've had before: if package value is below 200€, there would be no need for special customs declaration for UPS/Fedex/DPD/etc.

I hope you are wrong.
I just shipped your package via USPS today.
Should be there in a few days but no telling how long to go through customs.
In my experience Russia is a little slow but Argentina is the worst.
6 weeks plus if the customs people decide to let it go through. And no they don't return anything.

Mark, USPS would pass all packages to Russian Post right after crossing the border.
So all those recent customs changes aren't affecting USPS packages sent to Russia.

No matter from which part of US package was sent, it takes 3-4 weeks to get here.

Can't wait to get my hands on new wood