The program of the Russian Internet Forum (RIF 2026) included a session titled Preservation of the Languages of Russia, organized by the House of Russian Peoples. The session covered digital tools to support the language diversity and expand the presence of Russian languages online.
The session was organized in the context of the Year of the Unity of Russian Peoples and brought together representatives of government authorities, businesses, the academic community, and industry organizations. Participants discussed existing digital solutions and the prospects of expanding the presence of Russia’s minority languages online. Feride Aroniya, Director of the Department of Language Projects at the House of Russian Peoples, moderated the discussion.
The session focused on the practical aspects of digitalizing the languages of Russia. Representatives of the Ministry of Ethnic and Territorial Policy of the Republic of Khakassia, the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Institute of the Chechen Language, Yandex, the House of Russian Peoples and the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ shared their experience in integrating the languages of Russian peoples to modern tech solutions. They noted that, despite the positive dynamic, the progress is deterred by a range of systemic factors – mainly, the lack of machine-readable data for under-sourced languages, the shortage of specialists in this field, and the under-representation of languages on digital services.
The participants were specifically interested in discussing the role of tech companies. Andrei Mikheyev, Technical Director of the Languages of Russia project, talked about the contribution of Yandex to the development of language technologies. He noted that Yandex.Translator currently supports 20 minority languages spoken by around 11.5 million people, which accounts for 10 percent of the Russian population. That said, there is a steady user demand: over 500,000 people use search engines supporting minority languages every month, and some 400,000 use the translation tool.
Anna Tvorozhnikova, Deputy Director of the Department of Language Projects at the House of Russian Peoples, spoke about consistent coordination of language digitalization projects. In 2023, the House of Russian Peoples launched a working group, consisting of representatives of 20 regions, to integrate more than 30 languages into digital services. Thirteen languages have already been integrated. According to a 2025 monitoring, 41 Russian regions and 70 languages are currently covered by the digitalization project, with 43 languages having digital corpora of varying volumes, which indicates that a solid basis for further language technology progress is in the making.
Chief Analyst of the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ Maria Kolesnikova stressed in her report that it is important to develop the Russian national domain .РФ as a tool for supporting Russia’s minority languages. She noted that .РФ remains the world’s largest Cyrillic domain. Currently, over 800,000 domains are registered in .РФ and they are used by over 340,000 individuals and legal entities.
Maria Kolesnikova’s report specifically focused on expanding the language options in .РФ: by adding more Cyrillic symbols, it is now possible to register domains in the national languages of the 18 republics of Russia. At the same time, Maria Kolesnikova noted, the key challenge remains not only to create technological opportunities for registering such domains but to ensure that they are fully functional. Universal Acceptance (UA) is essential for helping online services and software to process domain names and emails in the national languages correctly.
The speaker further emphasized the importance of a systemic approach to solving this task, including cooperation with software developers and government bodies. In particular, the Coordination Center’s Поддерживаю.РФ project helps adapt Russian-made software to UA requirements.
“The effectiveness of the digitalization of Russia’s minority languages depends on the well-coordinated and systemic work by all stakeholders. We are delighted to see that the Coordination Center’s projects and efforts addressing the support of Cyrillic domains and emails are becoming a significant part of the general language digitalization process as a tool that supports their presence on the global network,” Maria Kolesnikova noted.
