The Kremlin and other government websites today became the first to get domain addresses in Cyrillic, the script in which Russian language is written.

Rf as a major step to deepen the Internet penetration and e-governance in the country where most of the population is not accustomed to the Latin script.

"With change of date at midnight on May 12, the first c domain in the world was launched, the two first sites president.rf and pravitelstvo.rf began operating," director of Russia's Coordination Centre for the National Internet Domain Andrei Kolesnikov today announced.

The address has to be written in Russian language, which uses Cyrillic script also used by several Slavonic countries including Bulgaria, Serbia and Ukraine and the usual 'www' prefix is not required.

Kolesnikov cautioned that not all Internet browsers support the new domain. The head of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) handed Kolesnikov a certificate giving Russia's Coordination Centre for the National Internet Domain full authority over the operations of the new Russian Cyrillic domain, RIA Novosti reported.

In November 2008,.rf (written in Cyrillic script) was approved by ICANN following a request by President Dmitry Medvedev.

Although there are thousands of diverse Russian websites on the ru.net, the Cyrillic would strengthen the cyber security of the Russian government sites.