{"id":10290,"date":"2026-07-23T07:30:16","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T11:30:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/?p=10290"},"modified":"2026-07-23T05:49:46","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T09:49:46","slug":"russias-new-ru-id-rule-puts-foreign-domain-owners-at-risk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/russias-new-ru-id-rule-puts-foreign-domain-owners-at-risk\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia&#8217;s new .ru ID rule puts foreign domain owners at risk"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\" dir=\"ltr\">Starting September 1, owning a .ru domain will require something most foreign registrants simply can&#8217;t provide: a verified Russian government identity.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\" dir=\"ltr\">The rule stems from a <a href=\"http:\/\/publication.pravo.gov.ru\/Document\/View\/0001202512290057\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">law<\/a> Russia signed in December 2025, and it covers both new registrations and the roughly six million .ru domains already active. To keep a domain, owners must verify their identity through Gosuslugi, the Russian government&#8217;s portal for state services, which requires Russian identity documents like a passport. Until someone completes that check, they can&#8217;t register, renew, transfer, or even repoint a domain, and if they never verify, Russia cancels the domain and opens it back up for someone else to claim.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\" dir=\"ltr\">For Russian citizens, this is mostly a formality since many already hold a Gosuslugi account. For foreign owners, it&#8217;s a much bigger problem. There&#8217;s no separate verification path for non-Russians yet, and nothing concrete had come together as of mid-2026. That leaves foreign .ru holders with three options, none of them great: hand over identity documents to the Russian government, pay for a workaround, or abandon the domain entirely. Some registrars, including <a href=\"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/com-laudes-450m-markmonitor-deal-signals-new-era-in-corporate-domain-services\/\">Com Laude<\/a>, are building trustee services where a Russian entity holds the domain on the owner&#8217;s behalf, though they&#8217;re still working out the details rather than selling them today.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\" dir=\"ltr\">What makes this bigger than a Russia-specific story is the reminder it carries: country-code domains answer to the laws of whatever country runs them, and that country can change the rules whenever it wants. China has required similar identity verification for <a href=\"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/domain-boom-masks-rising-churn-in-a-371-million%e2%80%91domain-web\/\">.cn domains<\/a> for years. Russia&#8217;s own internet regulator started suspending .ru domains, including news outlets, without court orders back in late 2025.<\/p>\n<p>Lawyers have pointed out that this effectively turns domain registration into a revocable permit rather than something resembling ownership. And the disruption doesn&#8217;t always come from the domain&#8217;s own government, either. When Britain agreed to hand the Chagos Islands over to Mauritius, that decision put the future of .io, a domain popular with tech startups, into sudden question, entirely unrelated to anything those businesses had done.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\" dir=\"ltr\">For anyone building a brand on a country-code domain, the practical takeaway isn&#8217;t to avoid them outright, since plenty run smoothly and reliably. It&#8217;s to understand who actually controls the domain and to keep a neutral fallback, like a .com, registered just in case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Starting September 1, owning a .ru domain will require something most foreign registrants simply can&#8217;t provide: a verified Russian government identity. The rule stems from a law Russia signed in December 2025, and it covers both new registrations and the roughly six million .ru domains already active. To keep a domain, owners must verify their [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20624,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7480,7483,7485,7484,7481,7482],"class_list":["post-10290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ru-domain","tag-country-code-domain-risk","tag-domain-ownership-sovereignty","tag-gosuslugi-domain","tag-registration-rules","tag-russia-domain-identity"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Russia&#039;s new .ru ID rule puts foreign domain owners at risk - Web Hosting News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/russias-new-ru-id-rule-puts-foreign-domain-owners-at-risk\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Russia&#039;s new .ru ID rule puts foreign domain owners at risk - Web Hosting News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Starting September 1, owning a .ru domain will require something most foreign registrants simply can&#8217;t provide: a verified Russian government identity. The rule stems from a law Russia signed in December 2025, and it covers both new registrations and the roughly six million .ru domains already active. 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The rule stems from a law Russia signed in December 2025, and it covers both new registrations and the roughly six million .ru domains already active. 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