ICANN completed the initial evaluation of the application for the .МОСКВА TLD in Cyrillic, which was submitted by the Foundation for Assistance for Internet Technologies and Infrastructure Development (FAITID) within the New gTLD Program. Since there are no official objections, the number of scores awarded to the application by ICANN experts will be enough for delegation of the .МОСКВА TLD. The Cyrillic top-level domain for the Russian capital is expected to be officially approved within a month.

“ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) will provide its advice on new gTLDs at ICANN Public Meeting that will take place in Beijing April 7-11,” says Dmitry Burkov, FAITID Board Chairman. “We don’t expect any objections for the .МОСКВА TLD from the GAC, so we are sure that it will get the green light in the near future.”

After ICANN approves this top-level domain, it will sign a Registry Agreement with FAITID. Then there will be a special pre-delegation testing period. The delegation of this TLD is expected in July 2013. It means that domain name registration in the .МОСКВА TLD may be launched by the end of this year.

Additionally to the one for .МОСКВА all other applications for Cyrillic TLDs also successfully passed initial evaluation. These are the following TLDs: .РУС, .ДЕТИ, .КОМ, .ОРГ, .САЙТ, .ОНЛАЙН and .КАТОЛИК.

Initial evaluation is currently in progress for the application for an ASCII top-level domain for the capital of Russia - .MOSCOW. It is expected to be completed in June 2013. Delegation of this TLD is expected in the beginning of 2014.