.su is an Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) that was designated for the Soviet Union on 19 September 1990. Even though the Soviet Union itself was dissolved 15 months later, the .su top-level domain remains in use to the present day. It is administered by the Russian Institute for Public Networks (RIPN, or RosNIIROS in Russian transcription). Initially, before two-letter ccTLDs became standard, the Soviet Union was to receive a .ussr domain. The .su domain was proposed by the 19-year-old Finnish student Petri Ojala.

On 26 December 1991 the country was dissolved and its constituent republics gained independence, which should have caused the domain to begin a phase-out process, as happened with those of East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia. Until 1994 In September 2007, lobbyists stated that they had started negotiations with ICANN on retaining the domain. In March 2025, ICANN reportedly notified the operator of the domain, the Russian Institute for Development of Public Networks (ROSNIIROS), of a planned phase-out of the domain by 2030.

As of May 2026, the .su ccTLD contained over 112,000 domains.

Usage

The domain was intended to be used by Soviet institutions and companies operating in the USSR. The dissolution of the Soviet Union meant that the new TLD was superseded by the new country TLDs of the former Soviet republics. Despite this, .su is still in use. Most of the .su domains are registered in Russia and the United States. According to data from May 2025, there were over 111,500 registered domains with the .su TLD (there are over 5.895 million .ru domains). Some organizations with roots in the former Soviet Union also still use this TLD. The pro-Russian Ukrainian separatist Donetsk People's Republic have also registered their domain with the TLD. The .su domain, along with .ru briefly hosted white supremacist websites that had been deplatformed elsewhere, including The Daily Stormer. Following complaints from Russia's internet regulator Roskomnadzor however, such websites have been removed from Russian TLDs.

The domain has been reported to host many cybercrime activities Rules for timely suspension of malicious domains

See also

  • Nostalgia for the Soviet Union

References

  • <!--Statistics of registrations under the .su domain
  • RIPN press release regarding future of .su domain

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