ICANN announced that 27 new gTLD applications passed its Initial Evaluation. These are the first of almost 2000 applications. All 27 passes are for internationalized domain names (IDNs).

ICANN plans to start the approval of new gTLD applications as early as April 23, 2013. The first to be implemented are IDN top-level domains, including Cyrillic ones: .МОСКВА, .РУС, .ДЕТИ, .САЙТ, .ОНЛАЙН, etc.

On April 12, 2012 FAITID submitted to ICANN applications for the .MOSCOW and .МОСКВА TLDs. According to the rules of the New gTLD Program these two applications are being evaluated separately. Application for .МОСКВА Cyrillic domain is number 69 in that queue, while its English-language version is number 881 on the list.