[cardiffspaceman]

On the other hand, sometimes the naive approach does work. I bought something from a Ukrainian via Kickstarter, and expected that some sort of difficulty would emerge, but no, it did not. From the tracking information, it appears that from his location, it was handed over to the Post, and it went through the usual steps to me in California.

In fact there was one unusual event, compared to my daily experience, which was an event that blew the windows of his shop. So he divided his works across multiple locations for geographical diversity and carried on.