The free online encyclopedia Wikipedia was briefly blocked in Russia in August 2015. Some articles of Wikipedia were included into various censorship lists disseminated by the government. Further threats to block were made following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
On July 28, 2012, President of Russia Vladimir Putin signed Federal Law No. 139-FZ "On Amending the Federal Law on the Protection of Children from Information Harmful to their Health and Development and certain legislative acts of the Russian Federation". This law introduced a number of provisions involving the blocking of Internet sites on the blacklist system and prohibited Internet resources. A number of experts[ who? ] expressed concerns that this law could be used to enable internet censorship.
On November 1, 2012, the provisions concerning a unified register of domain names and URLs containing prohibited information came into force. [1] A Unified Register of Prohibited Sites was created.
Within three years of the adoption of the law, more than 25 Russian Wikipedia articles, mainly about drugs and suicide, entered the Unified Register of Prohibited Sites. [2] [3] [4] Most of these articles, after some time, were removed from the register. However, on August 24, 2015, there was a short blocking of Wikipedia in Russia. [5]
On March 1, 2022, Roskomnadzor, the Russian agency for monitoring and censoring mass media, wrote to the Wikimedia Foundation asking for removal of the article "Вторжение России на Украину (2022)" ('Russian invasion of Ukraine') on the United States-hosted Russian Wikipedia. The agency threatened to block access to the site, claiming that the article contained "illegally distributed information" including "reports about numerous casualties among service personnel of the Russian Federation and also the civilian population of Ukraine, including children". [6] [7]
On March 11, 2022, a Russian Wikipedia editor based in Minsk, Belarus, Mark Bernstein, was detained by the Belarusian security service GUBOPiK after he was accused online of violating the 2022 Russian fake news law for his edits on articles covering the Russian invasion of Ukraine. [8] [9] [10]
On March 16, 2022, the Russian Agency of Legal and Judicial Information (a news agency founded by the RIA Novosti, the Constitutional Court of Russia, the Supreme Court of Russia, and the High Court of Arbitration of Russia in 2009) published an interview of Alexander Malkevich, the deputy chairman of the commission on the development of information society, media and mass communications of the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation. In this interview, Malkevich said that Wikipedia (both Russian and others) was becoming a "bridgehead for informational war against Russia". He also stated that Russian law-enforcement agencies had identified thirteen persons who were carrying out "politically engaged editing" Wikipedia's articles, and about 30,000 bloggers "participating in informational war against Russia". [11]
According to Novaya Gazeta , pro-Kremlin structures related to Yevgeny Prigozhin are actively involved in doxing "coordinators of an informational attack on Russia", including Wikipedia editors. Novaya Gazeta also reports that Special Communications Service of Russia (a division of the Federal Protective Service) employees are trying to disseminate pro-Kremlin propaganda by editing Wikipedia articles. [12]
On May 18, 2022, Roskomnadzor demanded to remove articles about the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and the term "Rashism" from the English Wikipedia. [13]
On March 31, 2022, Russian media censorship agency Roskomnadzor threatened to fine Wikimedia up to 4 million rubles (about US$49,000) if it did not delete information about the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine that is "misinforming" Russians. [14]
In April–May 2022, the Russian authorities put several Wikipedia articles on their list of forbidden sites. The list included the articles on the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and Rashism, [15] several articles on Russian Wikipedia devoted to military action and war crimes during the Russo-Ukrainian War, [16] and two sections of the Russian article about Vladimir Putin. [17]
On July 20, due to the refusal of Wikipedia to remove the articles about the Russo-Ukrainian war, Roskomnadzor ordered search engines to mark Wikipedia as a violator of Russian laws. [18] [19]
The Russian Wikipedia is the Russian-language edition of Wikipedia. As of October 2024, it has 2,006,294 articles. It was started on 11 May 2001. In October 2015, it became the sixth-largest Wikipedia by the number of articles. It has the sixth-largest number of edits (141 million). In June 2020, it was the world's sixth most visited language Wikipedia. As of September 2024, it is the third most viewed Wikipedia, after the English and Japanese editions.
Dmitri Yurievich Nossov is a Russian judoka and politician.
Lenta.ru is a Russian-language online newspaper. Based in Moscow, it is owned by Rambler Media Group. In 2013, the Alexander Mamut-owned companies "SUP Media" and "Rambler-Afisha" merged to form "Afisha.Rambler.SUP", which owns Lenta.ru. The online newspaper is one of the most popular Russian language online resources with over 600 thousand visitors daily.
The Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media, abbreviated as Roskomnadzor (RKN), is the Russian federal executive agency responsible for monitoring, controlling and censoring Russian mass media. Its areas of responsibility include electronic media, mass communications, information technology and telecommunications, supervising compliance with the law, protecting the confidentiality of personal data being processed, and organizing the work of the radio-frequency service.
Censorship of Wikipedia by governments has occurred widely in countries including China, Iran, Myanmar, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, Uzbekistan, and Venezuela. Some instances are examples of widespread Internet censorship in general that includes Wikipedia content. Others are indicative of measures to prevent the viewing of specific content deemed offensive. The duration of different blocks has varied from hours to years.
In Russia, internet censorship is enforced on the basis of several laws and through several mechanisms. Since 2012, Russia maintains a centralized internet blacklist maintained by the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media (Roskomnadzor).
Sergei Eduardovich Prikhodko was a Russian politician and diplomat. From May 2013 to May 2018, he was Deputy Prime Minister in Dmitry Medvedev's Cabinet. He was engaged in international cooperation of the Cabinet. He served as the First Deputy Head of the Russian Government Office from 2018 to 2021. He had the federal state civilian service rank of 1st class Active State Councillor of the Russian Federation.
Mediazona is a Russian independent media outlet focused on Anti-Putinist opposition that was founded by Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, who are also co-founders of the protest group and band Pussy Riot. The outlet's editor-in-chief is Russian political journalist Sergey Smirnov.
Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Zharov is a Russian politician. He served as head of Roskomnadzor from 2012 to 2020.
The Russian information war against Ukraine was articulated by the Russian government as part of the Gerasimov doctrine. They believed that Western governments were instigating color revolutions in former Soviet states which posed a threat to Russia.
On 11 March 2022, Mark Izraylevich Bernstein, a Belarusian blogger and contributor to the Russian Wikipedia based in Minsk, was detained by GUBOPiK personnel after online accusations of violating the Russian 2022 war censorship laws for his editing of Wikipedia articles on the topic of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He was sentenced to 15 days' administrative arrest under Article 24.3 of the Administrative Code of Belarus. After that period, he was kept in detention; on 24 June 2022 he was sentenced to three years of restricted freedom and released from custody.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is extensively covered on Wikipedia across many languages. This coverage includes articles on and related to the invasion itself, and updates of previously existing articles to take the invasion into account. Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects' coverage of the conflict – and how the volunteer editing community achieved that coverage – has received significant media and government attention.
The Russian fake news laws are a group of federal laws prohibiting the dissemination of information considered "unreliable" by Russian authorities, establishing the punishment for such dissemination, and allowing the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media (Roskomnadzor) to extrajudicially block access to online media publishing such information. The most well known of these laws is the Federal Law of 4 March 2022 No.32-FZ enacted during the Russian invasion of Ukraine; the adoption of this law caused the mass exodus of foreign media from Russia and termination of the activity of independent Russian media.
On 7 April 2022, Pavel Alexandrovich Pernikaŭ, a 30-year-old Belarusian human rights activist and Wikipedia editor, was sentenced to two years imprisonment for "discrediting the Republic of Belarus" by making two edits to Wikipedia about political repression in Belarus and posting one article to the website of a human rights organization about torture and extra-judicial killings in Belarusian detention centers. Days after his imprisonment, he was recognized as a political prisoner by Belarusian human rights organizations.
On Amendments to the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation and Articles 31 and 151 of the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation is a group of federal laws promulgated by the Russian government during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These laws establish administrative and criminal punishments for "discrediting" or dissemination of "unreliable information" about the Russian Armed Forces, other Russian state bodies and their operations, and the activity of volunteers aiding the Russian Armed Forces, and for calls to impose sanctions against Russia, Russian organizations and citizens. These laws are an extension of Russian fake news laws and are sometimes referred to as the fakes laws.
The blocking of Meta Platforms in Russia is the process of blocking access and subsequent banning of Meta Platforms' social networks in Russia due to allowing Facebook and Instagram users to wish the death of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, as well as to call for violence against Russian servicemen participating in Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
The Informational Agency "Panorama", shortened to Panorama, is a Russian-language satirical website which publishes satirical "news" on topical regional and international issues. It is analogous to the American digital media company The Onion. The Panorama has been known for using its articles by many famous Russian public figures and the media as real news, even though each article on this website is accompanied with the note "The text is a grotesque parody and is not real news".
Readovka is a Russian online news resource, founded in 2011 in Smolensk as a public page on VKontakte. In 2014, its owner created the Readovka website, which at that time specialised in regional news. In 2017 it started to cover events in Russia and internationally. The Readovka media holding includes the "Ready" communication agency, as well as a group of regional projects united by the "Main in the City" brand.
Ruwiki is a Russian online encyclopedia. It was launched in June 24, 2023 as a fork of the Russian Wikipedia, and has been described by media as "Putin-friendly" and "Kremlin-compliant". A full-scale launch took place on 15 January 2024.
