The Ukrainian government has singled out individual tech companies to ask them to ban services in Russia, and the list of tech companies refusing to do business or sell products there is growing by the day. Now Ukraine's tech-savvy leaders are calling for something bigger for Russia. completely separate from the global internet. The calls were answered with a resounding “no” by ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), which is responsible for internet governance. Applications have been made to delete Russia's top-level domains such as . ru along with the nation's associated Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates.

But their motto is “One World, One Internet,” and in his response to Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine Mykhailo Fedorov, ICANN Executive Director Goran Marby said: “As part of our mission, maintaining neutrality and acting in support of the global Internets, our mission does not extend to taking punitive action, imposing sanctions or restricting access to any segment of the Internet, regardless of provocation.

The digital privacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) was one of several organizations supporting the decision, saying in a statement EFF's Corynne McSherry and Konstantinos Komaitis said the war was not the time "to tamper with the basic protocols of the Internet infrastructure, as it would have 'dangerous and long-lasting consequences'".