Dear Mirjam, dear Daniel, Robert, Mr. Postel, and others, as ripe-167 story goes on, I'd like to inform you about some new impressions and information we got with regard to it. Abstract: Ukrainian LIRs in their vaste majority would not agree with the Russian approach there and vote against the project of a new RIR in Moscow. As you already know, a conference of LIR' represantatives from Russia took place in Moscow, January 22. Ukrainian representatives were also present (4 delegations from major Ukrainian LIRs, me among them). During the direct conversations with "new RIR in Moscow" project initiators many aspects became much more clear. Here my opinions are. 1. During the meeting, *nothing* from the argumentation provided in ripe-167 was recognized by community as a sugnificant argument which clarifies the "new RIR" approach. Document authors didn't even bother defending their former argumentation. I got an opinion that argumentation given in ripe-167 was written with the only goal to convince RIPE and IANA, it's pretty much irrelevant to the current state of affairs here. 2. It seems that the idea of "new RIR in Moscow" has a plain political background, with a scope limited to a single (though big) country -- Russia, or even to a single city -- Moscow. Our Russian collegues are now facing the trend of their goverment trying to establish a certain degree of control over Internet business in Russia. They also recognize that IP address space distribution is one of the most important things to ISP business. So they decided to extend the scope and sugnificance of RosNIIROS registry as much as possible, probably in order to prevent "some others" (whos?) attempt to monopolise IP space redistribution *in Russia*. 3. The very idea of defining a "region" for the projected RIR in terms of politics, not geography (as opposed to the existing practice) -- is not occasional, this is semi-intentional. The abbreviation "CIS" should really be understood as "a sphere of Russian business and political interests". Some details. Ukraine is a large East European country with population of about 50 million comparatively educated and skilled people (as opposed to about 150+ million population of Russia). The whole territory of Ukraine is in European continent. The estimated size of Internet (and similar) services market here is comparative to Russian. From the other hand, Ukraine got about 3 year delay in social, technological et al. development compared to Russia (partially due to the fact that Russia monopolized many achievements and infrastructure of ex-USSR). So Russia has it's business and communication structures being developed faster now and the market is more tight so far. Naturally, Russian companies are interested in joining Ukrainian market, where they might become a stronger players. Consider also the fact that Ukrainian ISPs all were the customers of their Russian collegues (note the ex-USSR infrastructure above) some 2-3 years ago, and were getting sugnificant amounts of funds from Ukraine. Being a RIR (esp. in case RIPE will delegate them monopolistic rights at the territory mentioned) will let certain people and organisations to continue getting their "traditional" funds from other countries, as they used to do before. 4. Also note that RIRs tend to have a sugnificant influence on the technical policies and "technical fashion" among their customers; also this means access to technical information about them and ability to monitor the development of their networks. With RIPE (RNA) this is not an issue for us, as RIPE doesn't represent any single (or group) entity who has strong business interests in Ukraine or anyone who is interested in monitoring our development. And with RosNIIROS this *is* an issue potentially. RosNIIROS doesn't represent a voluntary association of any kind, there isn't one even in a single Russia so far. RosNIIROS is a semi-govermental organization, established as a daughter structure of Moscow "Relcom" company; and Relcom venture is wellknown for it's numerous and continued attempts to become a monopolist on Russian Internet services market; and recently lost a sugnificant share in Ukrainian market due to rapid development of Ukrainian communication infrastructure, which allowed us to get a choice of whom to pay for services. A RIR in Russia, which will tend to fall under the influence of Russian goverment and several big semi-monopolistic companies, will be probably able to cope with intra-Russia issues, but will also serve the interests of Russian business and politics; it won't be able to serve the interests of international community. Baltic countries (Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia) tend to avoid just *any* contact with Russia due to the reasons above; we in Ukraine aren't so radical, but our reaction continues to be strictly negative. Being an official representative of LIR UA.GU, I'd like to get a confirmation that our registry will be served by RIPE directly in the forseeable future. We'd also like to see an official confirmation from RIPE, of the fact that any new LIR at Ukrainian territory will *always* be either served by RIPE directly or will have a choice between direct service contract from RIPE or indirect -- from other RIPE office wherever it might be established in future (Moscow, Berlin, Istambul, Kiev... who cares?) Thanks a lot for your attention. Best regards, Andrew Stesin nic-hdl: ST73-RIPE