Despite the ongoing war that rages in Ukraine ever since Russia’s brutal invasion of the country, the Ukrainian ccTLD team Hostmaster Ltd. is safe.
The team is working diligently to keep the Ukrainian DNS server infrastructure they are responsible for up and running, maintaining 100% uptime for the .ua ccTLD.
Dmitry Kohmanyuk is one of the founders of the .ua registry operator and has been leading the technical operations for more than 20 years.
InterNetX conducted an interview with Dmitry Kohmanyuk to learn about the history of the Ukrainian ccTLD and its current struggles.
Dmitry, what is the story of the Ukrainian ccTLD .ua?
The Ukrainian ccTLD .ua was introduced in the root zone on 1 December 1992, based on the ISO 3166 standard. It is formed from the first and last letter of the country’s name in the local language: Україна (romanized: Ukraïna). The code could technically also have been .uk, but this was already allocated to the United Kingdom, which was also given the ending .gb (for Great Britain).
Today, this creates confusion as the two-letter Ukrainian language’s ISO code is “uk”. However, UA has become a truly well-recognized brand among Ukrainians. You can often find these two letters on products, packaging or ads. It doesn’t always mean they use the national ccTLD for their website, but it is a way of expressing the origin of a product or that something is intended for Ukrainians.
For the first ten years, there was no real company behind it. In the ’90s, domains were registered for free. We were not charging any fees. The first registrants were exclusively government bodies. After a while, the first big companies became interested. We were working during our spare time or allocating some resources from our companies. After more than 20 years, we are still running the ccTLD.
For the full interview click here.
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