A host of Internet sites using Cyrillic web addresses in the .рф top-level domain will be accessible from Tuesday onward, Russia's Coordination Center for the National Internet Domain said.
"At present, more than 100 applications for websites [in the Cyrillic Internet domain] have been processed," said Yulia Ovchinnikova of the center's board of directors.
"The situation changes every hour," she added.
The Russian president and government's websites, президент.рф and правительство.рф, were launched on May 13, when Russia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates became the first countries in the world to get non-Latin national domain names.
In November 2008, the .рф top-level domain was approved by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) following a request by President Dmitry Medvedev. The domain is aimed at raising the status of Russian as a global language, and is hoped to expand Internet use among Russian speakers unfamiliar with Latin characters.
According to the Russian Press and Communications Ministry, the number of websites operating under Cyrillic URLs may reach 50,000 by the end of 2010.
MOSCOW, May 25 (RIA Novosti)
