The Chinese virtual marketplace AliExpress has stopped processing even" disguised " orders from the Crimea. Replacing the address, VPN, disabling geolocation, virtual Russian maps no longer help. The technical support of the global platform does not recognize that Aliexpress follows international sanctions, all blocking is written off as a "technical failure".
The fact that the global virtual marketplace AliExpress incorrectly processes orders from the Crimea has been known since 2015. Then the Chinese suddenly learned that in the Krasnodar region of Russia there was a megapolis with a two-million population and a completely Russian name Shcheruk. This is how the Cyrillic layout looks like the value Other, which Crimeans register in the address field "city" to bypass the block. At the same time, the real index was specified, the Crimean one, and the parcels easily found their addressees. Other "crutches" were also used: replacing letters with numbers in the address and adding extra characters; disabling geolocation on mobile devices; using a VPN; regularly reinstalling the mobile app.

But about two weeks ago, all the proven methods stopped working. Payments and accounts are massively blocked. Even a complete change of address to the mainland does not help, users of the AliExpress Crimea group discuss in VKontakte. They do not serve even those customers whose accounts are marked with various vip-statuses – they gave Chinese manufacturers from several thousand to several tens of thousands of dollars.

It is not known what the blocking is based on, since payments still take place from time to time. But it seems that it's all about the index, aliexpress customers share their guesses.

For some, only a complete account change with a new email address and phone number helps. The address must contain only the Russian mainland index, users of the AliExpress Crimea group share their experience. After the order, the customer has to manually write off the seller and ask to change the address.

Or add the Crimean index to one of the address fields, in the hope that Russian post employees will guess to read it and redirect the parcel to the Peninsula.

The risk of being left without money and without goods increases dramatically – after 2 months of waiting at the post office, the parcel will go back to China. And the seller is unlikely to show scrupulousness when considering a request for a refund from a client with the status of a novice: "the probability of grabbing a block after opening a dispute is very high," experienced buyers write.

Officially, aliexpress technical support is not recognized as supporting sanctions against Russia and Crimea. The Chinese respond with restraint to the claims that there was a "technical failure". However, even without loud political statements, China actually joined the sanctions in the fall of 2014. Then the accounts of some Russian companies in Chinese banks were blocked with the strange wording "your company has some relation to Russia, we can no longer serve you". The trade war with the United States was not a reason for easing restrictions. In the fall of 2018, this situation became widespread.