Early preparations

The preparation, development, and technical testing of the domain started in 2007 by registrar RU Center. The domain delegation process started in November 2009 as an application to ICANN under the new Fast Track IDN ccTLD process. The domain is expected to be launched in 2010. In preparation for a launch, RU Center opened a sunrise registration period for Russian trademark owners from 25 November 2009 to 25 March 2010. General public registrations are planned starting 20 April 2010 through June 2010 using a Dutch auction process, and at a fixed price beginning in July 2010.
In January 2010 ICANN announced that the domain was one of the first four new non-Latin ccTLDs to have passed the Fast Track String Evaluation within the domain application process.
In a press release in December 2007, Alexei Lesnikov of RU-Center suggested that an auction for domain names could be highly successful, as was the case with a similar domain name auction on the .su ccTLD.
With comparisons being made with an equivalent Chinese TLD of .中国, it is anticipated that take-up of a Russian Cyrillic TLD could outstrip demand for the Latin alphabet equivalent, .ru. The Russian government announced their official intentions to register .рф in letters to ICANN in June 2008.

First use
The top-level domain became operational on the Internet on May 13, 2010. The first two accessible sites were http://президент.рф (president) and http://правительство.рф (government).