On April 7, 1994, the Russian Federation received the national domain .RU, registered by the international network center InterNIC. The domain administrator is the Coordinating Center of the national Internet domain. Earlier (after the collapse of the USSR), Lithuania, Estonia, Georgia and Ukraine received their national domains in 1992, and Latvia and Azerbaijan in 1993.
From 1995 to 1997, the .RU domain developed, first of all, at a professional level (home pages using a second-level domain name were very rare in those days, Internet users were limited to third-level domain names or, more often, a page from a provider, after sign "~" - "tilde").
The .RU domain peaked in 2006-2008. During this period, the annual growth rate remained at the level of +61%. From 1994 to 2007, 1 million second-level domain names were registered in the .RU domain. In the next two years, the figure was doubled. In September 2012, the domain counted 4 million domain names. In November 2015, the number of .RU domain names reached 5 million.
Today there are just over 5 million domain names in the .RU domain. In terms of the number of domain names, .RU ranks 6th among country code domains in the world and 8th among all top-level domains. .RU domain names are registered and promoted by 47 accredited registrars in 9 cities and 4 federal districts of Russia.
Source: linux.org.ru