Original Material
Government advises citizens to drop foreign domain registrars
The Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications is advising Russian businesses and citizens to register their websites using Russian domain registrars. In a statement, officials addressed the fact that Russian clients of foreign domain registrars recently started receiving notifications that their service will be terminated, due to US sanctions against Crimea.
Russia’s Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications advises Russian businesses and citizens to consider transferring their websites to domain-registrars located in Russia’s jurisdiction, to avoid unilateral termination of their domain hosting.
- On January 29, the world’s largest Internet domain registrar and web hosting company, Go Daddy, announced it would terminate its services to clients in Crimea, telling them, “Our records indicate you or a contact listed in your account may be located in the Crimea Region. If our records are correct, we'll unfortunately need to terminate your account and/or your affected product(s) as of January 31, 2015.”
- Current US sanctions ban American citizens and businesses from exporting or importing any good, service, or technology to or from Crimea. American companies and citizens are prohibited from buying real estate or commercial enterprises in Crimea, and they’re banned from investing in any Crimea-based business.
- In connection with US sanctions, Visa, MasterCard, and PayPal have also ceased operations in Crimea. Apple, too, shut off its App Store in the region, and Google has closed down the Google Play store for users in Crimea.