Mass Blackout Takes Russian Internet Offline

Hundreds of websites on the Russian-speaking internet were inaccessible Tuesday evening as a DNSSEC failure took .ru and .рф domains offline.

Users both inside and outside Russia complained of outages of major web-based platforms like Tinkoff Bank, online marketplaces Avito and Wildberries, search engine Yandex and telecoms provider MTS.

The Moscow Times' Russian service is among the websites impacted by the blackout.

The administrator for the national-level .ru and .рф domains said it was working to resolve the problem.

“A technical problem has arisen affecting the .ru zone associated with the global DNSSEC infrastructure,” the .RU/.Рф Domain Coordination Center said in a statement to St. Petersburg-based news outlet Fontanka.

“Specialists from the Internet Technical Center and MSK-IX are working to eliminate it. The problem has now been resolved for National Domain Name System subscribers. Restoration work is underway.”

Russia's Digital Development Ministry said in a statement that access to .ru websites would be restored “in the near future.”

This story is developing.