[5] In March 2013 a presidential decree signed by President Vladimir Putin included the Russian Post in a list of so-called strategic enterprises.

Peter the Great enacted reforms making the postal system more uniform in its operations, and in 1714 the first general post offices opened in Saint Petersburg and Moscow.

It delivered up to 70 million parcels per month to the Soviet Army front from the rear under extremely difficult and often very dangerous conditions.

Russian postal enterprises had operating and commercial independence, but with strong competition from former partnering telecommunication companies.

Different parts of the same system, connected by a single mechanism in adjacent regions, were in outright competition with each other, trying to lure corporate clients away from other competitors even if it involved an operating loss.

In 2004 Elsag Datamat won the tender to build Russian Post's first automated sorting centre.

[11] In January 2009 it was announced that Kazmin was to leave his position as CEO of the Russian Post due to a financial crisis from ambitious but poorly implemented reforms.

[15] In 2012 a group of people dissatisfied with the state of affairs established the website "anti-Russianpost.ru"; its goal was to allow users to highlight instances of disappointing or unsatisfactory service from Russian Post.

In the middle of March the clients of on-line retailers launched a massive spam attack on the Moscow office of the Roskomnadzor watchdog.

In this period the company received up to 1,000 messages from individuals with complaints about delayed deliveries of purchases made at Internet shops.

The director of the federal postal services of the Vologda Oblast said: "The reason for delays is not our own ineffectiveness, but the pressure of social factors.

[17] The company's new management, in October 2013, declared an ambitious goal of doubling revenues to make the company ready for an initial public offering in 2018 by allowing it to provide banking services, reducing the number of unprofitable branches and focusing on providing deliveries from on-line retailers.

For example, after opening an exchange centre in Yekaterinburg, a parcel from China to Sverdlovsk can be delivered in five days, including all customs clearance.

The company held a ceremony at Yakutsk Airport to launch its second new airmail plane under a programme to expand links to remote areas, its first being a flight in the Khabarovsk Krai territory on Russia's east coast.

Russian Post deputy director general Alexei Skatin said: "The mail must be delivered on time despite the difficult geography of the region.

[22] In December 2013, the government published its draft Federal Law on Postal Communications, which is expected to be approved in Spring of 2014.

In that year Russian Post was to begin deploying a unified ERP system — a set of integrated applications that allows creation of a single environment to automate planning, accounting, control and analysis of all core business operations across the enterprise.

In September 2013 Deputy Minister of Communications Mikhail Evrayev said that one of the major problems of the Russian Post was the lack of a unified information system working both at the central office and at all branches.

In September 2021, Vladimir Putin charged to increase capitalization of Russian Post from state budget for modernization of branches in rural and hard-to-reach areas by 2025.

[25] Business services The Russian Post has created a network of drop-off points where it accepts large shipments of parcels with orders, including those issued on marketplaces.

Since 2022, the Russian Post in 75 cities has been providing sellers of marketplaces with a service for the delivery of goods to warehouses of trading platforms.

Since September 1, 2022, Stoloto lottery tickets have ceased to be sold through the Russian Post (40 thousand branches).

Automatic issue of shipments is made under a special code that the recipient receives via cell phone as an SMS.

In September 2013 the Russian Post management decided to radically revise its approach to retail, and in particular refused to sell food in the offices.

It was decided to expand the idea of postal kiosks, and even entered the draft of a new strategy of development of the Russian Post until 2023, which was prepared by Boston Consulting Group.

[37] Russia's first automated regional sorting center opened in Podolsk, near Moscow in late 2009, using equipment of Italian company Elsag Datamat, SpA.

Until 2013, the Moscow MMPO processed up to 80% of all incoming international shipments to Russia which created much stress on the Russian Post.

This would allow mailers to send information electronically to be turned into physical mailpieces local to the recipient.