Due to Russia’s military attacks on Ukraine, a wide range of restrictions may be imposed on the top-level domain .RU. As a precaution, we would like to inform you today about these potential restrictions. The potential issues may relate to the administration of the domains or the operation of the entire zone under .RU.
Possible factors include:
Disconnection of the .RU zone by ICANN:
As its headquarters are located in the US, ICANN is subject to US law and is therefore bound by US sanctions, meaning it must act accordingly, even if this step would be drastic. Disconnecting the .RU zone would mean that these domains could no longer be resolved outside Russia.
EU sanctions against the Russian registry:
It is possible that the administration of .RU domains could be suspended. This would affect all European companies and/or private individuals who own .RU domains - regardless of any existing contractual relationship.
Counter-sanctions by Russia against European companies:
Sanctions from the Russian side cannot be ruled out either and would entail the same consequences as sanctions imposed by the EU.
Blocking of payment channels (e.g. SWIFT):
Due to the restrictions on payment transactions resulting from the SWIFT block, it is estimated that domains can still be renewed for a further 1-2 years; however, new registrations are no longer possible as domains would always have to be booked via prepayment.
.ru domains will be placed
in maintenance mode
As the overall situation is difficult to assess and we can no longer (nor do we wish to) offer domain registration, we will place the .ru domains into a permanent maintenance status due to Russia’s ongoing military attacks on Ukraine and will not be offering any new registrations for these domains. We ask for your understanding regarding this decision.
Our thoughts are with the victims of this war. We very much hope that this senseless violence will end soon and that peace will return to Ukraine.
