.ru domains fly off the shelf as Western sanctions bite

Russia’s ccTLD has posted very impressive growth in registrations for 2023, attributable largely to sanctions related to the country’s invasion of Ukraine.

ccTLD.ru, the registry for .ru and .рф, reported that it ended 2023 with 5,439,137 .ru domains, an increase of 506,024 or 10.3% over the year. It said 85% of the names were registered by Russians.

It said 1,709,718 new domains were registered in .ru, with over 200,000 being registered per month by December.

For comparison with fellow top-10 ccTLDs, Germany’s .de grew by 201,000 names last year, and Brazil’s .br grew by 220,000. The UK’s .uk shrank and the Netherlands’ .nl was basically flat.

In the smaller Cyrllic .рф, the growth rate was even greater — 13.7%, with 768,883 domains in total at the end of the year, up 92,769 names, the registry said.

Despite the rapid growth, .ru is still a bit off its 2017 peak of around 5.53 million domains, according to my database.

In a press release, ccTLD.ru director Andrey Vorobyev admitted that one of the “main drivers” of the growth were Russians transferring their sites to Russia “under the pressure of sanctions”.

After Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, many domain registries and registrars in the West unilaterally decided to stop doing business with Russian citizens and organizations, despite US government sanctions specifically not applying to domains.

GoDaddy cut off Russians and .ru while Namecheap, which has many support staff in Ukraine, cut off Russian customers and continues to prominently fund-raise for Ukraine on its storefront. Other companies announcing boycotts included 101domain, IONOS and Nominet.

Ukraine’s ccTLD, .ua, has fared less well during the crisis. Its total domain count shrank by about 77,000 to 514,000 in 2023, according to my database. The local registry, Hostmaster, had frozen deletions for a period to give people who had been displaced or mobilized more time to renew, but started releasing those domains last year.

Hostmaster has reported adoption of certain third-level geographic .ua domains that use Latin transliterations of Ukrainian place names, rather than Russian — .kyiv.ua versus .kiev.ua for example — as citizens seek to “de-Russify” their holdings.

Domain sales exempt from US sanctions on Russia

A variety of internet technologies, including domain name registration services, have been declared exempt from US sanctions on Russia.

The Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control has issued a notice (pdf) specifically authorizing the export to Russia for the following:

services, software, hardware, or technology incident to the exchange of communications over the internet, such as instant messaging, videoconferencing, chat and email, social networking, sharing of photos, movies, and documents, web browsing, blogging, web hosting, and domain name registration services

The move is reportedly meant to support independent media’s and activists’ fight against Russian government propaganda during the Ukrainian invasion.

Some US registrars, including Namecheap and GoDaddy, have chosen to restrict their Russian customer base on ethical grounds since the first week of the war in Ukraine.

Namecheap, which has many staff in Ukraine, has banned all Russian custom other than those actively opposing the Putin government.

101domain throttles its business in Russia

101domain has become the latest registrar to say it is limiting its business in Russia in response to the invasion of Ukraine.

The company, owned by Altanovo Domains, said today it is suspending all new accounts, orders and inbound domain transfers for customers located in Russia.

It will also no longer sell or accept transfers for domains in Russian-linked TLDs .ru (including third-level names), .рф (.xn--p1ai), .МОСКВА (.xn--80adxhks), .рус (.xn--p1acf), .дети (.xn--d1acj3b), .su, and .tatar.

“We will continue to process renewals of existing services for the time being, however this may change at any time and without notice,” the company said.

101domain follows fellow registrars Namecheap, IONOS, and GoDaddy in announcing what effectively amount to commercial sanctions against Russia.

Industry bodies CENTR and ICANN, along with ccTLD registry Nominet, have also committed to concrete actions to sanction Russia and/or support Ukraine.

ICANN bigwigs support sanctions on Russian domains

Current and former ICANN directors are among 36 high-profile tech policy veterans to support the creation of a new domain block-list that could be deployed in humanitarian crises such as the current war in Ukraine.

An open letter (pdf), published last night, calls to effectively create a list of sanctioned domain names and IP addresses that could be blocked in much the same way as current lists help network operators block spam and malware.

The letter says:

We call upon our colleagues to participate in a multistakeholder deliberation… to decide whether the IP addresses and domain names of the Russian military and its propaganda organs should be sanctioned, and to lay the groundwork for timely decisions of similar gravity and urgency in the future.

Signatories include current ICANN director Ihab Osman, former chair Steve Crocker, founding CEO Mike Roberts, former CSO Jeff Moss and former director Alejandro Pisanty.

Other signatories include three members of the European Parliament, various academics and security researchers, the bosses of networking coordination groups, and the CEOs of several ccTLD registries.

Dmitry Kohmanyuk, founder of Ukrainian ccTLD registry Hostmaster, also signed the letter.

The letter deconstructs Ukraine’s recent requests for internet sanctions against Russian, including its request for ICANN to turn off Russia’s .ru domain, and concludes “the revocation, whether temporary or permanent, of a ccTLD is not an effective sanction because it disproportionately harms civilians”.

Such a sanction would be trivially circumvented and would lead to the proliferation of alt-roots, harming international interoperability, they say.

Having ruled out sledgehammers, the letter goes on to suggest a nutcracker approach, whereby the domain names and IP addresses of sanctioned entities are blocked by consensus of network operators like they’re no more than filthy spammers. The letter reads:

Blocklisting of domain names allows full precision and specificity, which is the problem that precludes action by ICANN. The system is opt-in, voluntary, consensual, and bottom-up, all values the Internet governance community holds dear. Yet, at the same time, it has achieved broad adoption.

We conclude that the well-established methods of blocklisting provide the best mechanism for sanctioning both IP routes and traffic and domain names, and that this mechanism, if implemented normally by subscribing entities, has no significant costs or risks.

The billion-dollar question is of course: Who would decide what goes on the list?

The letter, which says it’s designed to be a conversation-starter, is a bit vague on the policy-making aspect of the proposal.

It calls for the formation of “a new, minimal, multistakeholder mechanism” that would publish a block-list data feed after “due process and consensus”, adding:

This process should use clearly documented procedures to assess violations of international norms in an open, multistakeholder, and consensus-driven process, taking into account the principles of non-overreach and effectiveness in making its determinations. This system mirrors existing systems used by network operators to block spam, malware, and DDoS attacks, so it requires no new technology and minimal work to implement.

While such a system might well help protect gullible (to pick a nationality at random) Americans from the Kremlin’s misinformation campaigns, it’s not immediately clear to me how such a system would help shield blameless everyday Russians from their own government’s propaganda.

If rt.com, for example, were on the block-list, and Russia wanted RT available to its citizens, presumably Russian ISPs would just be told, at the barrel of a metaphorical gun, to stop using the block-list.

It will be interesting to see where this conversation leads.

ICANN’s Ukraine relief may extend to Russians too

Russian domain name registrants affected by sanctions could benefit from ICANN’s relaxation of its renewal rules.

ICANN on Monday announced that it was classifying the war in Ukraine as an “extenuating circumstance” under the terms of its standard Registrar Accreditation Agreement.

This means that Ukrainians cut off from the internet due to the invasion could be cut some slack, at their registrar’s discretion, when it comes to renewing their gTLD domains.

But ICANN’s executive team was asked, during a session at ICANN 73 later that day, whether the same benefits could be extended to Russian registrants, perhaps unable to pay due to Western sanctions on payment systems.

Visa, Mastercard, American Express and Paypal are among those to restrict Russian accounts in recent days.

ICANN mostly ducked the question.

Co-deputy CEO Theresa Swinehart responded by deferring to the original blog post, and general counsel John Jeffrey followed up by quoting some of the post’s language:

“I think we’re clear in that the events in Ukraine and the surrounding region are now considered by ICANN to be an extending circumstance under the Registrar Accreditation Agreement, under 3.7.5.1,” he said.

The words “surrounding region”, found in the original post alongside “affected region” and “affected area”, seem to be key here.

They could just as easily refer to Russia as they could to places such as Poland and Hungary, which are currently accepting hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees.

It seems the registrars may have the discretion here; ICANN was apparently in no hurry to provide clarity.

The exchange came during a 90-minute session in which ICANN’s executive team were peppered with community questions, many related to the war and how ICANN might be affected by US-imposed sanctions.

Execs said that ICANN would comply with any US laws related to sanctions but that so far it had not seen anything that would affect its ability to contract with Russian companies.

A question apparently related to whether ICANN was reviewing its relationships with law firms and banks that may be involved with Russian oligarchs, much like Tucows is doing, was ducked.

They were also asked how the $1 million ICANN at the weekend earmarked to help keep Ukraine online might be spent, and while CEO Göran Marby alluded to a broad request from Ukraine for satellite terminals, he said it had been less than a day since the resolution was passed and it was too early to say.

“We obviously will focus on what we can do that makes the maximum impact as close to our mission as we possibly can,” added Sally Costerton, senior VP of stakeholder engagement.