Russians want Cyrillic internet domain

Kremlin says it's a matter of national pride

12 June 2008 12:28 GMT / By Katie Scott

The Russian president wants his country to get its own internet name in Cyrillic.

Dmitry Medvedev says promoting the Russian language as a global language will be one of his personal priorities, and said that it is a matter of national pride.

"We must do everything we can to make sure that we achieve in the future a Cyrillic Internet domain name - it is a pretty serious thing", Medvedev told the International Congress of Russian Press in Moscow.

"It is a symbol of the importance of the Russian language and Cyrillic and it is not a bad sphere of cooperation. And I think we have a rather high chance of achieving such a decision in the Internet world."

The move is said to be a reaction against the creeping influence of English in the country and also the ncreased use of local languages instead of the Cyrillic script.

Medvedev added that 300 million people worldwide used Russian media and that a Cyrillic domain name would help the profile of the Russian language.

According to Reuters, Russia wants its domain name to be .rf - for Russian Federation - but written in the Cyrillic script, as opposed to .ru or .su (which was inherited from the days of the Soviet Union).