Russia will be able to create its first Internet addresses using the Cyrillic alphabet next year, communications ministry official Vladimir Vassiliev told Interfax news agency on Sunday.

The move follows a decision by the organisation that regulates the Internet to deliver a radical shake-up to the domain-name system.

Russia, which currently uses two top-level domain names .ru and .su, will be able to create a third in Cyrillic by the second quarter of next year, Vassiliev said.

Some Russians have trouble using the Latin alphabet and being able to surf the web entirely in Russian would lead to an increase in the number of users, he said.