And no I don't think ISPs, ICANN, or any other organization should get involved in political disputes.
Where Russia has crossed the line, though, is in the way they are handling the situation. You bomb/attack government buildings/communication infrastructure/roadways/etc. Launch a party to assassinate the leaders.
You *don't* attack apartment buildings, shoot citizens that are just in the street, target populated areas, dress up as the other party, use vacuum bombs.
The problem here is not that there is a spat between Ukraine and Russia, the problem is that Russia has violated like 10 different things in the Geneva Convention on how you fight a war.
- News of the USSR's fall was leaking out over USENET?
- Folks were live posting from gas-proofed rooms in Israel, during one of the wars?
There is a reason that the US Government was developing and promulgating things like TOR, for a while. Kind of useless if we cut the lines of communication. (Of course, removing DNS records doesn't effect connectivity.)
The problem with all of these sorts of things and why respectable entities like ICANN should avoid such things is because its inherently subjective and prone to a sort of viewers bias that is moulded more or less by the propaganda of the state from which you come (in our case, North America/US et al).
For instance, an actually unpopular opinion is that this all started when a lawfully elected government was overthrown by a minority of the population (<1%) and that the majority of Ukrainians were disenfranchised as a result. This was particularly acute in the Donbass region that voted for Yanukovych very heavily. This brought about an actual rebellion, one that is flatly denied by the government in Kyiv, which in turn brought about the Minsk agreement where the breakdown was that the rebels sought to have local elections for their own governors/mayors that could not be dismissed by the federal legislature. For whatever reason, the Government in Kyiv found this unpalatable and never implemented this part of the agreement until finally the ceasefire broke down and a formal war ensued. The point of this paragraph being that discerning which side is representing "democracy" is a matter of perspective.
Because the shoe could easily fit on the other foot and also be legitimately correct and the same argument could be made to remove TLDs for UA or supporting countries and because which is correct is almost always a matter of perspective-- its best for any such governing entity to avoid allowing itself to be drawn into such ordeals.
As for their request, given that the country has more or less banned all periodicals in Russian from the news stand irrelevant of content, routinely shutdown independent media outlets and because this email simply acknowledging valid grievances in south eastern Ukraine could be cause for a 10 year term in prison if written from within Ukraine-- I will only say that I find the request by the government there to be "extremely consistent with Ukrainian values".
It appears that Daniel Suchy via NANOG <nanog@nanog.org> said:
It's also technically possible to perform full AXFR from some official
root-server (it's allowed on some instances) and bring your own
root-server locally-anycasted instance anywhere you want.
It's not just possible, it's quite common. See RFC 8806.
There's no need for Ukraine to engage ICAAN to achieve its goals.
Pretty much every nation has existing telecommunications laws with
power for regulation to require telecommunications providers not to
provide service to particular nation-states. Law written in an era
where Russia military deployment and expansionary policy was front of
mind.
It's really up to each national leadership to decide if they wish to
support the intent of Ukraine's request by issuing regulation. Much as
nations are currently doing for the finance sector.
I believe it is a proper response, besides that it is not right for ICANN to get in the middle of this type of conflict, in situations like this, increasing the flow of real information counters the flow of misinformation.
Convention (V) respecting the Rights and Duties of Neutral Powers and Persons in Case of War on Land. The Hague, 18 October 1907.
CHAPTER I : THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES OF NEUTRAL POWERS - ART. 8.
Art. 8. A neutral Power is not called upon to forbid or restrict the use on behalf of the belligerents of telegraph or telephone cables or of wireless telegraphy apparatus belonging to it or to companies or private individuals.
CHAPTER I : THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES OF NEUTRAL POWERS - ART. 9.
Art. 9. Every measure of restriction or prohibition taken by a neutral Power in regard to the matters referred to in Articles 7 and 8
must be impartially applied by it to both belligerents.
A neutral Power must see to the same obligation being observed by companies or private individuals owning telegraph or telephone cables or wireless telegraphy apparatus.