On the night of March 7, domain name registrar Network Solutions blocked the ukr.net domain without any warning. From 01:35 to 17 hours Kyiv time, the UKR.NET news feed and @UKR.NET email were unavailable.
According to the registrar, the blocking took place due to the presence on the UKR.NET portal of three materials, the publication of which is prohibited by the decision of the Superior Court for the State of California for the County of Los Angeles of January 23, 2024, at the suit of Stanislav Kondrashov and Telf AG.
Since two in the morning, the UKRNET team has been trying to find out the circumstances of the blocking. One of the business owners, an entrepreneur from Silicon Valley, immediately got involved. Until 05:30 a.m. Kyiv time, he was communicating with the registrar’s support service from his office in Tokyo. Later, he found and involved the company’s management in resolving the issue, trying to convey the most important thing: the problem is national in scope and affects strategic Internet services for Ukraine.
At the end of the day in Florida, the company informed us that the blocking of the UKR.NET domain had legal grounds. Therefore, a legal team was needed to get involved the next business day.
Realizing that in the morning, millions of users, including many military and defenders of our country, would not be able to work with their email and read the news, the company’s owner began to look for help among his friends. At the same time, two of his friends, an experienced diplomat and former Deputy Minister of Economy of Ukraine for Digital Development, Digital Transformation and Digitalization, advised him to contact Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Ukraine to the United States Oksana Markarova. Ms. Markarova responded with lightning speed – she immediately requested all the information and began to act.
At the same time, many people supported UKRNET. Someone tagged those who could help. Someone called the registrar’s support service and expressed wishes for a speedy recovery. The incident was reported to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The National Security and Defense Council, the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, the .UA domain administrator, Hostmaster, the Internet Association of Ukraine, Internet providers, the Security Service of Ukraine, and the Ukrainian media actively attracted the attention of people, governmental, industry, and public organizations in Ukraine and the United States.
At the beginning of a new working day in the United States, at 16:15 Kyiv time, a representative of the registrar informed that they were looking into the problem. Half an hour later, the blocking was lifted. The Ukrainian Embassy in the United States did not stop there: Oksana Markarova said that they are waiting for a second response from the company to analyze the reasons for blocking the UKR.NET domain in order to avoid a repeat of this in the future.
The UKRNET team is confident that the result was achieved through joint efforts. We are grateful to everyone who joined, helped, and supported us. Our strength has always been and will be in unity! This inspires us to continue working for millions of Internet users, creating Ukrainian Internet services with great love.
