Russia suffered a large-scale Internet outage, affecting users across the country, and almost all website access to the local .ru domain name was interrupted. Russia's Digital Ministry said in a statement on Telegram on Tuesday that the issue was related to technical problems with the global Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) for the .ru domain name, which is used to ensure the security of data exchanges in Internet Protocol networks.
The ministry said late on Tuesday that the problem had been resolved and access had been restored.
Websites including the most popular local search engine Yandex.ru, e-commerce leaders Ozon.ru and Wildberries.ru, as well as the applications of the country's largest banks Sberbank PJSC and VTB Group were affected by the outage, state operator Ria said, citing reports from traffic monitoring service Downradar.
Russia's Sputnik News Agency said outages occurred in Moscow, Moscow Oblast, St. Petersburg, Tatarstan, Sverdlovsk Oblast and Novosibirsk Oblast.
Sberbank and VTB did not immediately respond to requests for comment, and Yandex, the largest Internet company, declined to comment.