On May 12, 2025, the Russian internet segment celebrates a significant day: exactly 15 years ago, Russia was delegated the Cyrillic top-level domain .РФ. It became the first Cyrillic top-level domain in the global internet addressing system. For 15 years now, the .РФ domain has been the leader among all top-level domains written in national alphabets (IDN), becoming an example not only for Cyrillic top-level domains, but also for many other country IDNs (IDN ccTLDs).
Today .РФ has over 760,000 registered domains, with 725,000, or 95.4%, delegated ones. Almost 29% of them lead to applications and one-page sites (such as landings and advertisements), 25% lead to unique websites, another 24% are parked, 14% are exclusively for mail services, and 8% are used to redirect to sites that address other domain zones. It is noteworthy that .РФ domains are mostly used as intended – that is, to host websites – outside of Moscow or St. Petersburg, in other regions of Russia. For example, 36.3% of .РФ domains registered in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) host websites. Other regions boasting such high levels include the Omsk Region (34.4%), Sevastopol (33.6%), Kalmykia (33.4%), and the Jewish Autonomous Region (32.6%).
The .РФ domain is supported by a network of 136 accredited registrars and over 328,000 domain administrators. On average, more than 550 new Cyrillic domain names are registered in the .РФ zone every day.
Of the domain names in .РФ, 303,837 (92,3%) are administered by Russian citizens or legal entities, which operate 701,903 domains (92%).
Over 18% of domain names in .РФ are older than 10 years, and most (almost 40%) of the .РФ domains are 1 to 5 years old. Almost 35% of domain names in .РФ are registered in Moscow and the Moscow Region. The .РФ domain is also popular in St. Petersburg (7.1%), Krasnodar Territory (3.2%), Sverdlovsk Region (3%), Chelyabinsk Region (2.2%) and Novosibirsk Region (2.2%).
The successful launch and development of the .РФ domain has become an inspiration for many countries. It demonstrated that domains written in native scripts can be popular and easy to use. Its launch marked a turning point in the development of domain names written in national alphabets, including Cyrillic. Today, there are 17 Cyrillic top-level domains globally: 9 of them are country-code IDN domains, and 8 are generic. Most countries that use the Cyrillic alphabet now have their own national domains: Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Serbia, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and even the European Union.
However, the use of the Cyrillic script on the internet is not limited to top-level domains alone. It is equally important to expand the .РФ domain with additional Cyrillic characters that reflect the linguistic diversity of Russia’s peoples. This would not only help increase online access for Russian-speaking users, but also foster the development of the media in minority languages and support the principle of multilingualism on the internet.
In 2024, the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ conducted a study assessing the demand for integrating characters from minority languages into the .РФ domain. The findings confirmed that while the overall use of minority languages online is quite high, speakers of some languages still face limitations due to the lack of support for certain Cyrillic characters or diacritical marks. This is why extensive work will be done to introduce these symbols to .РФ during the jubilee year.
“We are proud of the success of the .РФ domain, which has truly become a unifying platform for Russian-speaking internet users around the world. Today, we are witnessing the steady growth of the Russian segment of the internet, thanks in no small part to the .РФ domain, which expands the possibilities for communication in the native language. Together with our partners, the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ is working to ensure that .РФ is available to as many users as possible. Today, the implementation of universal acceptance of non-Latin domains and email addresses is a top priority, and we are making strong progress. We would like to thank everyone contributing to the growth and promotion of the .РФ domain: our registrars, our users, technology companies, and those who safeguard the security of the Runet. Thank you all, and happy birthday, .РФ!” Andrey Vorobyeov, Director of the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ, said.
The development of the .РФ national domain, which uses Cyrillic characters in Russian, began back in 2008. Russia’s application, submitted by the Coordination Center, was among the very first following ICANN’s approval of the procedure for launching internationalized country-code domains (IDN ccTLDs). As soon as November 2009, it was decided to delegate .РФ. In early 2010 preliminary registration in the new domain zone began. On May 12, 2010, records about the new domain zone were added to the internet root zone, and this day is considered the official birthday of the world’s first top-level domain in Cyrillic: the .РФ domain. The first sites in the new domain zone – президент.рф and правительство.рф – were launched on that day. On November 11, 2010, registration in the .РФ domain opened, which caused a sensation. On the very first day, over 240,000 Cyrillic domain names were registered, an unprecedented figure that confirmed the demand for web addresses in the native script.
You can learn more about the history and evolution of the Cyrillic .РФ domain on the 15.кц.рф website.
