The Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ and the Поддерживаю.РФ project have released the findings of their annual assessment of Cyrillic domain and email address support among Russia’s most visited websites. This marks the third consecutive year of the study, which evaluates the readiness of popular Russian websites to correctly process email addresses containing Unicode characters in both the local part (before the @ symbol) and the domain name (after the @ symbol).
As before, this year’s study has included 300 Russian and international websites that are most frequently accessed by Russian users from desktop and mobile devices. The list was compiled using data from Mediascope’s Cross Web project. At the time of testing, 167 sites (56 percent of the initial sample) had one or more functional user interaction forms requiring email input – such as registration, subscription, feedback, and other forms. These forms were tested for their ability to accept Cyrillic email addresses without errors (validation) and to successfully send and deliver emails to test addresses (verification).
Results of Cyrillic email address validation:
- 29 percent of resources successfully accept email addresses with Latin local parts and Cyrillic domains (e.g., ascii@юникод.юникод);
- 19 percent accept email addresses with Cyrillic local parts and Latin domains (e.g., юникод@ascii.ascii);
- 13 percent accept fully Cyrillic email addresses (e.g., юникод@юникод.юникод).
Results of Cyrillic email address verification:
- 14 percent of resources successfully send emails to addresses with Latin local parts and Cyrillic domains (e.g., ascii@юникод.юникод);
- 5 percent send emails to addresses with Cyrillic local parts and Latin domains (e.g., юникод@ascii.ascii);
- 2 percent send emails to fully Cyrillic email addresses (e.g., юникод@юникод.юникод).
Four platforms in the study – Ozon, Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Apteka.ru, and LitRes – provide full support for all types of Cyrillic addresses, correctly accepting and sending emails to them.
Four other sites (DNS retail chain, The Voice, Roblox, and Aviasales) properly process emails with Cyrillic local parts and Latin domains but do not accept addresses with Cyrillic domain names.
Compared to 2024, the share of sites accepting юникод@ascii.ascii addresses decreased by 6 percent, while acceptance of ascii@юникод.юникод addresses rose by 4 percent. The number of sites accepting fully Cyrillic юникод@юникод.юникод addresses dropped by 22 percent. Meanwhile, confirmation rates for fully Cyrillic addresses and those with Cyrillic local parts remained unchanged from last year.
“For the third year in a row, we observe that most popular websites still lack full support for Cyrillic domains and email addresses. The primary reasons include developers failing to account for standards like IDNA and EAI when building websites. However, we see major Russian platforms successfully implementing such support, proving it is a feasible technical task,” noted Maria Kolesnikova , head of the Поддерживаю.РФ project.
The full study is available on the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ website.
Further technical details on Cyrillic domain and email address implementation can be found in the Guidelines for Software Support of Internationalized Domain Names and Email Addresses in the .РФ ccTLD, developed by the Поддерживаю.РФ project.
