On September 24, the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ held a session at RIF 2025, this year’s Russian Internet Forum. Titled Languages Spoken by the Internet, it offered its participants an opportunity to zero in on the topic of digital multilingualism. These days, it is viewed as a key factor for preserving the cultural heritage and identity of various ethnic groups and cultures in Russia within a global cyberspace and a core element in terms of shaping a forward-looking internet development strategy. During the session, attendees talked about the way supporting language diversity changes the internet, why this matters for Russia’s regions and for asserting digital sovereignty in general, as well as the way new opportunities affect users and businesses.
Today, promoting language diversity in the digital space is increasingly becoming a strategic priority. Russia has been contributing to this global agenda. In fact, President Vladimir Putin signed an Executive Order Approving the Basic Principles of Russia’s State Language Policy in July. This document prioritizes efforts to support languages spoken in Russia, promote the Russian language in the digital space and foster language diversity. This transcends any local contexts or frameworks and is about to evolve into a global agenda dealing with language-related matters in the digital space. The internet cannot be reduced to its data transmission role. It also forms a cultural space where languages have a direct bearing on the way users from various countries and regions develop their sense of identity.
Coordination Center Director Andrey Vorobyev moderated the session. In his remarks, he reminded the audience that the new version of the Domain Name Registration Rules for .RU and .РФ came into effect on August 11, 2025. Under this document, the .РФ country-code Cyrillic domain now offers the option of registering domain names using characters from 17 state languages used across various republics of Russia.
“People can now use their mother tongue when choosing names for their websites so that they match the way native speakers talk. This promotes multilingualism, brings the internet closer and makes it more accessible for millions of users, while also reinforcing their cultural identities and helping preserve languages in the digital space. We view this as a very promising undertaking,” Andrey Vorobyev pointed out.
Maria Kolesnikova, who serves as Chief Analyst at the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ and heads the Поддерживаю.РФ (literally translates as Support.RF) project, said that these trends emerged after .РФ started supporting Cyrillic characters. She also discussed the way this has affected online users, and what software developers will have to do to help people avoid mistakes when using multilingual domain names and email addresses.
“Multilingualism forms one of the core pillars of efforts to develop the internet and can be viewed as an important element of digital inclusivity. In Russia, inclusivity often means offering more opportunities to people with disabilities, but in the digital environment this notion has been placed in much wider context. When treated as part of an inclusive approach, multilingualism implies that all people must enjoy equal opportunities when accessing and using the internet regardless of the language they speak and what they view as their mother tongue,” Maria Kolesnikova said.
General Director of the Technical Center of Internet, Alexey Rogdev, reported that users registered 1,569 domain names over the past one and a half months after getting an opportunity to use 17 languages of the peoples of Russia recognized by the state. The crossed O symbol – Ө, ө – has been the most widely used character so far, he said, since it is used in several languages in Russia, including by the Bashkirs, Buryats, Kalmyks, and Tatars. This letter appeared in 389 domain names such as нөгөш.рф, өмет.рф, өрөбүл.рф, and өрөгөй.рф.
“However, a closer look at the registered domain names demonstrates that so far, most of them consist of Russian words declinations written using the expanded Cyrillic alphabet. This does not mean that there are no addresses in the languages spoken in Russia. In this context, security becomes a key factor in terms of promoting the use of an expanded Cyrillic alphabet in the .РФ domain. Our colleagues from the Coordination Center, the Domain Patrol and the relevant organizations have already accumulated a lot of best practices for fighting phishing attacks and online scams, which makes me confident that these efforts will create a sense of security for our people,” Alexey Rogdev pointed out.
The speaker went on to say that finding a keyboard with an expanded Cyrillic alphabet is also a major challenge, while setting up a virtual keyboard requires additional efforts and users have to be quite tech-savvy to do it.
“We can see that in order to achieve these noble objectives, actors from across this sector must coordinate their efforts, and we will be glad to contribute to this cause,” Alexey Rogdev said to conclude his remarks.
Anzor Kurashinov, Minister of Ethnic Affairs and Civil Society Initiatives in the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic, said that on September 24, the day when he took the floor at the forum, the Kabardino-Circassian and the Karachayevo-Balkarian languages were added to the Yandex Translator service. These languages’ teachers compiled a corpus of 100,000 sentences in these languages and uploaded them to the Yandex translating service. Faina Kursheva, who heads the department for working with civil society and religious organizations in the Karachayevo- Circassian Republic’s Ministry for Ethnic Affairs, Mass Communications and Press, said that this event was something the two republics had to celebrate. She also mentioned that specialists from these two republics worked closely together to make this happen.
Head of the Department for Supporting and Carrying out Language-Related Projects at the House of the Peoples of Russia, Feride Aroniya, talked about her organization and what it does. In 2024, it reviewed the state and development status of Russia’s minority languages in the IT sector. The effort consisted of collecting data on 70 languages across 41 regions of the Russian Federation, and this information was added to UNESCO World Atlas of Languages (UNESCO WAL).
She went on to elaborate on the effort to add characters pertaining to Russia’s languages to the Unicode Cyrillic alphabet. The House of the Peoples of Russia worked with ParaType on this project in 2023 with support from the Federal Agency for Ethnic Affairs.
“We collected materials and submitted applications for 18 languages of Russia in order to add them to Unicode. We are now waiting for a response, and hope that it will be positive,” she pointed out.
Andrey Mikheyev, Deputy Head of a project to localize Yandex’s services and provide them in the languages spoken in Russia, focused in his presentation on how Yandex prioritizes what its users want and shapes their expectations regarding search, maps and voice-animated interfaces. The Russian Languages project is part of the Yandex.Translator, Yandex.Browser, Yandex.Cloud, and Yandex.Keyboard services. Every month, Yandex.Translator attracts as many as 390,000 unique users.
“As of today, we offer translations into 14 languages: the Bashkir, Udmurtian, Tatar, Hill Mari, Mari, Chuvash, Yakutian, Ossetian, Komi, Tyva, Erzyansky, Mokshansky, Kabardino-Circassian, and Karachayevo-Balkarian languages,” Andrey Mikheyev said.
The media and youth initiatives play an instrumental role in promoting local Russian languages, Alesya Degtyaryova, who works as Federal Coordinator at the KIBERY media movement and acts as the spokesperson for the House of the Peoples of Russia, said. KIBERY, of cyborgs, are proactive online users, from seven to 25 years, who create media content and take part in important social events in their respective regions. Many of them later become mentors for the following generations of media activists. They help creators and those who come up with novel initiatives and practices across Russia expand their online footprint. Today, the KIBERY media movement has representatives in all federal districts and 27 Russian regions.
Ruviki is another Russian project which has already evolved into a major platform for using AI-driven tools. Over 25 million users already joined it across Russia, while its team persists in its efforts to support more local languages of Russia. The Ruviki portal publishes texts in over 20 languages of Russia. Ruviki’s Deputy Director General Yelena Litovchenko offered the audience an insight on creating content in Russia’s local languages. In her presentation, she also talked about the most popular languages and content.
“Our efforts to create content in Russia’s languages help preserve the unique cultural identities of the peoples of Russia in the digital space, while also preserving a substantial corpus of writings in local languages. This enables us to create a national knowledge bank about Russian regions and the unique cultures of the people living there. In addition to this, we help young people preserve their cultural identities and develop professional competences by taking part in intellectual volunteering initiatives,” Yelena Litovchenko pointed out.
ParaType Commercial Director Sergey Bobryshev, who sits on UNESCO’s Information for All committee and is a member of the Designers’ Union of Russia, concluded the session. His company has spent many years developing typefaces for Cyrillic and local Russian languages’ alphabets.
“Today, typefaces became one of the main tools for preserving unique language profiles online, and ParaType has been proactive in this domain. I encourage all of you to use multilingual typefaces as part of an expanded Cyrillic alphabet,” Sergey Bobryshev said to round up the discussion.
RIF 2025 continues, so make sure to follow our updates.
