More than 20,000 Russian domains were deleted by mistake.

On January 3, 2012, a technical failure occurred in the registry, as reported by the Internet Technical Center (ITC).

As a result of this failure, between 5:00 PM and 6:00 PM, 10,000 domain names in the .RU domain and 10,000 names in the .РФ domain were deleted.

The domains that were released and in the queue for "planned" deletion were subject to deletion.

All registered domain names are currently under the changeProhibited status until January 13, 2012, inclusive. Unregistered domain names listed above are subject to a registration lock until January 13, 2012, inclusive.

According to the TCI, the deletion of domains in the normal mode will resume on January 11, 2012.