How will my letter reach the addressee?
There has been no postal service between Australia and Russia since 2022, so a paper letter can't be posted from here at all. Russian prisons don't accept email either. What does work is the Russian prison system's own electronic mail services. Here's how it works.
Prison mail services: ZT and F-Pismo
Russia has two paid services that deliver letters to people in prisons and pre-trial detention centres:
- ZT (zt.ru), until recently called Zonatelecom. A private company that works with the Russian prison service.
- F-Pismo (Ф-Письмо), formerly FSIN-Pismo. The prison service's own letter service.
Both work the same way. The sender types the letter on the website, giving the prisoner's region, facility, full name and year of birth. Inside the prison, a censor reads the letter. Once it is approved, the letter is printed on paper and handed to the prisoner, usually within a few days.
The sender can also pay for a reply form. The prisoner writes an answer by hand, and it is scanned and sent back to the sender's account on the same service.
Why you can't just send it yourself
Both services charge per page, and they accept only Russian payment methods: Russian bank cards and payment systems. Since the sanctions, cards issued in Australia and most other countries don't work there. Letters also have to be written in Russian, because letters in other languages are usually held up or blocked by the censor.
What we do
This site is run by Russian volunteers who have accounts with ZT and F-Pismo and can pay for them. When you send a message here:
- A volunteer reads it. A machine translation into Russian is drafted, and the volunteer checks and corrects it.
- The volunteer sends it to the prisoner through ZT or F-Pismo from their own account, adding a short reference number so a reply can be matched to your letter.
- If the prisoner replies, the reply arrives in the volunteer's account. We translate it into English and, if you left your email, send it to you.
Writing a letter costs you nothing. The volunteers cover the service fees.
What to expect
- A censor reads everything, in both directions. That's why we ask you not to write about the prisoner's case, the war or politics. Such letters are blocked and can make life harder for the person you're writing to.
- Sometimes a letter is not delivered. The censor can withhold it without saying why, or the prisoner may have just been moved to another facility. We do our best to keep addresses up to date.
- Replies are slow and not guaranteed. Prisoners have limited time, paper and energy, and replies are censored too. A reply can take weeks or months, or never come.
Even without a reply, your letter matters. It tells the prisoner they have not been forgotten, and it shows the penal system that someone outside is paying attention.