why does the url https://rt.com change to https://rt-english.com when I click the "Enter" button.

They have some problems since big part of Yandex infrastructure has been transferred to a cloud.

This is not our issue, please reach out to RT.

Thanks, I sensed the problem was related to malware; since Firefox warned me about having found something suspicious and even added that it was highly unlikely that RT would expose it's website to a url that does not use https:// Is a time coming soon when only an internet programmer will be able to use the internet.

RT must be aware of the issues that are cropping up due to their transfer to Yandex infrastructure and I hope will sort it out.

I find it hard to rule out malware, knowing how schizophrenic about Russia the western elite has become. RT has them shaking in their boots and there is nothing that would make them happier than using any means to shutdown access according to their interjpretation of what they pretend is RT's propaganda. This present issue would not be the only time they have tried.

No, they just didn't manage to rotate their server certificates on time, and caused downtime to its own services. (Whether the international version was connected to the outage isn't obvious, but after they resolved their server trust global traffic started getting the international version nonetheless.)

No conspiracy. Simple maintenance. Somebody made a boo boo.

I don't know exactly what you mean in laymen's term by "they just didn't manage to rotate their server certificates on time"? You may have given me the right answer. I am just a computer user, not an internet programmer and have difficulty with the professional jargon. I also don't understand how the boo bboo can be resolved.

I do know that, as I described in my description of that wrong page that opened yesterday. It was obviously the wrong page  that eventually opened finally opened. The changes were clearly not of RT's choosing, as the changes all went against the best interests of RT. The company would never have willingly put it up.  

The wrong page opened again this morning on Firefox. In the mean time I opened Yandex using the url https://rt.com/ The wrong page showed up on Firefox. It had migrated to Yandex. I allowed the https://rt.com/ to remain open on Yandex and after some time the correct page opened and is now functioning correctly.

Meanwhile I had left Yandex (wrong page) open so that Firefox and Yandex were both open at the same time. I checked Firefox again just now, and the correct page is now in operation on both Firefox and Yandex. It appears the problem has been resolved, but I am still not clear on what transpired and it sort of looks like the boo boo was fixed by Yandex.

As per the first answer: if you have questions about operations of a site, please reach out to them.

The browser only performs the instructions as provided by the server. Whether they encrypt things or not, handle maintenance without downtime or not, or redirect things where they intend or not — that's their call. So they will be able to tell you more behind the decisions.

(Yes, they made a mistake Monday: support.mozilla.org/questions/1611486 🤡 …)

Thank you for addressing the responsibilities of the owner of a site. On this occasion, I don't understand exactly how the site can know how the instructions provided is handled at the other end by the receiver. Is it possible that I created the problem myself? In the back of my mind I recall that the access to the RT site problem arose soon after I clicked on several bookmarks almost at once. One of those bookmarks was RT. I was distracted by something and I don't remember what it was. It happened in so fast. I seem to recall some kind of momentary flicker, but didn't pay any attention to it. Later I went to access RT and ran into the problem.

I am always befuddled with Ethernet settings and their functions. Just saying.

I don't have the answers to the questions as they are not related to Mozilla products or services.

If you're interested in the request–response ping pong under the hood, expand the details in https://httpstatus.io/?url=https://rt.com to see the server data requesting the international redirect.

This Monday nobody was hacked, censored or interpreted anything according to anyone's propaganda — what happened is the maintenance necessary to finish before ~11am UTC has not taken place, at least on some of the serving nodes, potentially facing international traffic — so establishing the connection was no longer feasible (partly in tandem with their request to never lower the protections for them, knocking out any potential workarounds). This has been mitigated at some point around ~4pm UTC on their side.

I know this sounds like a broken record, but PLEASE if you're interested in their infrastructure, pretty please liaise with them and direct the questions you're after to the site operator or their vendors.