From 12 January to 12 April 2012 ICANN will accept applications on top-level domains according to New gTLD process.

Among other domains New gTLD for the first time allows to implement geographical TLDs for cities and regions as well as top-level domains for cultural and linguistic communities.

According to the research held in 2011 by FAITID, RU-CENTER and Russian Agency for Information Society Development (RAISD) in Russia 11 regions (Tymenskiy, Ulianovskiy, Smolenskiy, Sverdlovskiy Omskiy, Khabarovskiy regions and also North Ossetia and Tatarstan republics), and three cities (Moscow, Perm and Sochi) are potentially interested to participate in New gTLD.

Uncertain attitude to New gTLD is in North Caucuses regions of Russia, though many local administrations there would like their cities to participate in the process.

Nigniy Novgorod is the only region that does not want to get its own TLD – authorities there consider that .NNOV.RU and .NN.RU geodomains serve all needs of the local Internet community.

First geographical TLDs will be implemented in Russia according to New gTLD process is .MOSCOW and Cyrillic .МОСКВА (.MOSKVA). According to FAITID plans an application for the domains will be ready for submission to ICANN to the end of February 2012.

In mid-April 2012 ICANN will start evaluation of the application that will last for about 7 months. The TLDs may be delegated in the beginning of 2013.