The Hostmaster company announced the start of de-Russification of the national top-level domain .ua. As of May 1, five geographic domains are switching to the Ukrainian language. This is another step towards the harmonization of the domain space of Ukraine and increasing the recognition of Ukrainian domains.
The changes affect the following domains:
- chernigov.ua becomes chernihiv.ua
- chernovtsy.ua becomes chernivtsy.ua
- khmelnitskiy.ua becomes khmelnytskyi.ua
- kirovograd.ua becomes kropyvnytskyi.ua
- rovno.ua becomes rivne.ua
Already registered domain names in these domains will continue to work without restrictions. All operations with them (transfer, continuation, restoration) will be performed without changes.
New registrations will be made only in updated domains. Their names correspond to the names of regional centers and the current rules of transliteration of the Ukrainian alphabet in Latin.
For paired domains (rivne.ua – rovno.ua, kropyvnytskyi.ua – kirovograd.ua, etc.), the principle of mirroring is preserved. This means that for each registrant of a domain name in an outdated domain, a name of the same name in the corresponding Ukrainian domain is automatically reserved.
For example, the registrant of the domain “example.rovno.ua” will have the reserved name “example.rivne.ua”. This principle also applies to changing the registrar or registrant – if the name exists in both domains, changes in one of them require simultaneous changes in the mirror domain.
Hostmaster explains that these measures are taken to ensure transparency and prevent possible abuse in the domain space. The goal is to make the Ukrainian domain space more recognizable and accessible, while maintaining continuity of use of existing domains.
Since the beginning of 2024, more than half a thousand appeals regarding violations of the language law have been registered. Most often, they were recorded in the city of Kyiv, Odesa and Kharkiv regions.
