Many of the websites specializing in providing names and addresses of Russian women also provide email forwarding and translation. This is a service that you should seriously consider.

You submit a letter for your intended to the website in email format, written in English, or your native language. That email is forwarded to their local affiliated marriage agency, which translates the email into Russian, if you request translation. The translated letter, and its original, is then sent by snail mail (regular post) to the recipient.

I recommend that you request that local snail mail be sent by registered mail. My wife and I were almost like ships passing each other in the night. My second letter to my future wife did not get to her without either of us being aware of the miscue.

I asked the email-forwarding agency to send my letter registered, but they did not, sending it by regular mail, as I found out later. Fortunately, after not hearing from her for some time, I wrote to her again and we did not lose contact.

I shudder to think that we almost didn't meet because of the Belarusian Post Office. They almost sabotaged the processing of our Fianc' Visa as well.

Even though I requested that my letters be sent by registered mail, and paid for that service through the website, the local marriage agency in Gomel, Belarus sent it by regular mail to my wife and pocketed the extra money.

My wife called up the agency to complain. The woman at the agency said something to the affect that you are lucky to be receiving any mail at all. There are lots of women like you. You are just one of a million. Be happy you are getting the mail you have received.

The Soviet era was extremely successful at populating the country with petty, arrogant, greedy, beaureacrats, some of which have brought that charming attitude from the government state run agencies to the private enterprise service industries.

After you are making regular correspondence with someone, confirm that she is receiving your letters and that they are being sent registered mail, if you are paying for that service.

If you really like someone, and they don't answer your letters, don't assume they are not interested any more. Frequently I found that they had not received my letters. Write again. Be persistent. Women like insistent men.

Of course, if they have not answered a second or third letter, I think you can safely assume that they are not interested.