.ru is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Russia introduced in April 7, 1994.
The control of .ru is assigned to the Russian Institute for Public Networks (RIPN). However, since 14 March, 2005 registry operations for registrations directly under .ru are being performed by RU-CENTER while RIPN carries out registry operations for third-level domain names under .com.ru, .net.ru, .org.ru & .pp.ru.