On April 8, the second day of the RIGF 2026, the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ presented its Virtuti Interneti (Service to the Internet) award.  Since 2010, the award has recognized those who have made a tangible contribution to the industry development. The winner is determined by the Program Committee of the Russian Internet Governance Forum.

This year, the Virtuti Interneti award was won by Karen Kazaryan, a Russian analyst and expert in internet technologies and the digital economy.

Karen worked as an editor-analyst at the Regional Public Center for Internet Technologies (ROCIT); in 2010, he became Editor-in-Chief of the analytical publication Internet in Figures and assumed the role of Chief Analyst at the Russian Association for Electronic Communications (RAEC). During this period, he authored and led a number of major industry studies, including the series The Economy of Runet and The Internet in Russia.

At the same time, he was engaged in expert and legislative activity as a consultant and member of the Communications and IT working group of the Expert Council under the Government of the Russian Federation, and participated in the development of the Strategy for the Development of the Internet Industry in Russia until 2020, a long-term program for the development of the Internet as well as industry roadmaps.

Since 2022, Karen Kazaryan has served as Director of Analytics at the Digital Economy autonomous non-profit organization and Director General of the Internet Research Institute. He supervises the annual publication of the White Paper on the Digital Economy, a joint project with the Ministry of Digital Development and the Russian Government. In 2025, at the request of Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Grigorenko, Karen Kazaryan oversaw the development of an IT industry assessment model to regularly monitor the condition of the IT sector and the effectiveness of government support based on verified tax accounting data.

Karen Kazaryan is an expert on digital issues with the UN Development Program and permanent member of the Program Committee of the Russian Internet Governance Forum.

In his lecture, the Virtuti Interneti winner told how technological progress influences the society development. He noted that investments in technological development benefit the entire economy; regardless of how huge they may be, they will pay off.
“I am a techno-optimist. I believe that technological progress brings mainly benefits to mankind and that the state’s role is to assist the technology development and make efforts to neutralize the negative aspects that technological development sometimes brings. Meanwhile, technologies give us from time to time a magic ticket solving the problems that we don’t know how to solve otherwise, often even in unexpected areas,” Karen Kazaryan emphasized.

The Virtuti Interneti award winners are representatives of the Internet community, business, science and state, who have made a major contribution to the development of the Runet and the global Internet. Past winners include Dr. Steve Crocker, the inventor of the RFCs and a founder of the technical community of global Internet developers; Dr. Wolfgang Kleinwaechter, Professor Emeritus for International Communication Policy and Regulation at the Department for Media and Information Studies of the University of Aarhus; Jovan Kurbalija, author of the book An Introduction to Internet Governance; Alexey Platonov, a founder of the Runet, former director of the Russian Research Institute for the Development of Public Networks, and Director of the MSK-IX autonomous non-profit organization; Sergey Plugotarenko, Director of the Digital Economy autonomous non-profit organization; Elena Voronina, Director of Development at the InData Network Technology Development Fund, and many others.