I do not believe that .md is going to disappear tomorrow.
But there is a political risk attached to .md that does not exist in quite the same form for an ordinary generic TLD.
.md is a country-code top-level domain.
And country codes ultimately depend on countries continuing to exist as separate entities.
That makes every serious discussion about the possible reunification of the Republic of Moldova with Romania relevant not only politically, historically and emotionally, but also technically for anyone who owns a .md domain.
Because if the Republic of Moldova eventually ceases to exist as a separate state, and the MD country-code element is subsequently removed from ISO 3166-1, the consequences for .md will be very real.
IANA states that when the ISO 3166-1 code element associated with a ccTLD is removed, the ccTLD loses its eligibility and enters a retirement process. The standard retirement period is five years, with the possibility of an extension of up to another five years.
So reunification would not make .md vanish the following morning.
The chain would look more like this:
political reunification → end of Moldova as a separate state → removal of MD from ISO 3166-1 → retirement of .md → eventual removal from the DNS root
I have explained that technical mechanism separately in Your .MD Domain Will Disappear Permanently.
This article is about something else.
It is about the political nails being driven into that coffin.
I will keep updating this article throughout 2026 as new statements appear.
Nail #1 — Maia Sandu
President of the Republic of Moldova
Former Prime Minister of the Republic of Moldova
January 11, 2026
“If we have a referendum, I would vote for the unification with Romania.”
This was not a newspaper interpretation or a statement attributed to Maia Sandu by somebody else.
She said it herself, on camera, during an interview with The Rest Is Politics: Leading.
Immediately afterwards, Sandu explained her reasoning:
“It is getting more and more difficult for a small country like Moldova to survive as a democracy, as a sovereign country, and of course to resist Russia.”
She also acknowledged that there was not currently a majority in Moldova supporting reunification and described European integration as the more realistic objective.
Source
| Field | Details |
|---|---|
| Person | Maia Sandu |
| Position | President of the Republic of Moldova; former Prime Minister |
| Exact quote | “If we have a referendum, I would vote for the unification with Romania.” |
| Interview | Holding the Line Between Democracy and Putin — President of Moldova, Maia Sandu |
| Programme | The Rest Is Politics: Leading |
| Date | January 11, 2026 |
| Timestamp | approx. 07:31–08:00 |
| Primary source | YouTube — The Rest Is Politics: Leading |
| Video | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYQlvaHHvIg |
| Secondary confirmation | Reuters, January 12, 2026 |
Follow what Moldova’s current and former leaders are saying.
And start thinking now about what you will do when your .md domain is permanently deleted.
“It simply represented a country that no longer existed… and without the ISO code, ICANN had no basis to keep it.”
— Slobodan Marković, on the disappearance of.yu
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