Was there some sort of assurance that nothing was going to happen when the contract expired, and this expectation was changed? Freenom hasn’t been registering domains since Jan 1.
It’s seeming a little odd to me that this is catching people with their pants down.
Is it? Because pretty much every ccTLD is owned by their given country. They have all rights over it, but some registrars took it to themselves to issue those domains on the countries’ behalf, that probably didn’t even know about it way back.
Free TLDs may have been great for hobbyists, but also great for spammers, phishers and other unlawful activities. And as usual, the bad bunch killed a good thing.
If you want a good TLD, use a generic one (org, name, space, etc.) or use a ccTLD that represented by your own country.