Kiev.com recently sold in an online auction for $88,000 USD. Kiev is the capital of Ukraine and its largest city with a population of 2.6 million.

Some other recent sales include:

taxspecialists.com- $7,000
websitebids.com- $1,600
trustbuddy.com- $1,350
withinyou.com- $1,125

In addition, Live Current Media sold Indonesia.com and Leisure.com in separate sales for undisclosed amounts shortly before the New Year. My guess is the sale prices were both in the low six-figure range.

Right now activity in the domain market is pretty slow. Expect things to pick up in the coming weeks.

Continue reading: Kiev.com sells for $88,000 at auction

Yesterday, The Ukrainian Network Information Center (UNIC) announced that it had submitted the necessary paperwork to ICANN for the creation of the a .ukr Cyrillic IDN. The extension is expected to be available for registration by February or March 2010.

Once the extension goes live, Ukrainians will be able to access the web in their native language. No information on registration costs has been released, but the UNIC better keep it cheap if the average citizen is expected to register the IDN.

It will also be interesting to see whether or not foreign corporations and individuals will be able to register a .ukr. Doing so could result in the most valuable names being swept up by foreign speculators, but at the same time, would allow international firms doing business in the country to reach more Ukrainians.

Source | Kyiv Post
Photo | Casiel

Continue reading: Ukraine submits application for Cyrillic .ukr domain