Wikipedia remains one of the last propaganda-free corners of Internet in Russia

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After Russia launched the invasion of Ukraine in February, its government swiftly passed Orwellian censorship laws. The remaining independent media like Novaya Gazeta, Meduza and Echo of Moscow were forced to shut down or went into exile, accessible only via VPN.

Yet, there is still a big Russian-language source that’s calling the war a war and is not complying with state propaganda. It’s Wikipedia. 

In the Russian edition of the online encyclopedia, the article about the war is called “Russia's invasion of Ukraine (2022)” – not “Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine”, as the censors require. Wikipedia’s rules require adherence to a neutral point of view and factual coverage of the topics.

The overview article about the war in Russian has been viewed almost 20 million times since the invasion started, having become by far the most popular entry of the year so far. Then, there are hundreds more articles devoted to various aspects of the war. A separate article on the invasion’s casualties has received over 2.5 million views. The article devoted to Vladimir Putin, which details the Russian president’s decision to launch the invasion, has been viewed over 4 million times.

As a result, the authorities in Russia and allied Belarus are intimidating individual volunteer Wikipedia editors. Mark Bernstein, an experienced Wikipedia editor, was arrested in Belarus in March. The authorities opened a criminal investigation. In June, he was sentenced to three years of restricted freedom and released from custody.

The formal reasoning is Bernstein’s alleged participation in the 2020 democratic protests in Belarus, but the de-facto cause of persecution has been Bernstein’s involvement in Russian Wikipedia’s coverage of the war in Ukraine. (Pavel Pernika?, Belarusian human rights activist and Wikipedia editor, was sentences to two years in prison for making a few edits to Wikipedia on the topic of anti-Lukashenka protests).

In the meanwhile, Wikipedia editors from Russia have been harassed and doxxed online. Multiple Wikipedia volunteers have been forced to leave the country or at least try to conceal their identity as thoroughly as possible.

So far, however, the Russian government hasn’t resorted to blocking Wikipedia entirely. That’s probably because, despite high-profile attempts, the authorities failed to create a meaningful Russian alternative, unlike with social networks. (Unlike with Facebook and Instagram, which have been blocked for several months now).

Still, a block seems if not imminent than probable. The Russian authorities have requested the Wikimedia Foundation, the NGO operating Wikipedia and the adjacent ecosystem, to remove information from encyclopedic articles about the topics like the war crimes committed during the invasion, shellings of civilians in Mariupol, and the massacre in Bucha.

Wikipedia will not cooperate with the Russian government to remove the information requested, but the Wikimedia Foundation is using whatever legal avenues remain in Russia to keep operating Wikipedia in the country. In June, a court in Moscow fined the Wikimedia Foundation 5 million rubles (~€78,000); the NGO filed an appeal.

Given the scale of Russia’s censorship over the past months, it wouldn't be surprising if Russian authorities end up blocking Wikipedia anyway at some point in the future. For now, however, the encyclopedia remains one of the few non-blocked propaganda-free corners of the Internet in Russia.