Wikipedia has started to be blocked in Russia.Find out what to do before it's too late.
The free online encyclopediaWikipedia was briefly blocked inRussia in August 2015. Some articles from Wikipedia were included in various censorship lists disseminated by the government. Further threats to block were made following theRussian invasion of Ukraine.
On July 28, 2012, President of RussiaVladimir Putin signedFederal 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 theblacklist system and prohibited Internet resources. A number of experts[who?] expressed concerns that this law could be used to enableinternet 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 aboutdrugs andsuicide, 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]
.png)
Wikipedia may be blocked in Russia over anarticle about the invasion of Ukraine.
Find out what to do →
On March 1, 2022,Roskomnadzor, the Russian agency for monitoring and censoring mass media, wrote to theWikimedia Foundation asking for the removal of the article "Вторжение России на Украину (2022)" ('Russian invasion of Ukraine') on the United States-hostedRussian 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 inMinsk, Belarus,Mark Bernstein, was detained by the Belarusian security serviceGUBOPiK after he was accused online of violating the2022 Russian fake news law for his edits on articles covering theRussian invasion of Ukraine.[8][9][10]
On March 16, 2022, theRussian Agency of Legal and Judicial Information (anews agency founded by theRIA Novosti, theConstitutional Court of Russia, theSupreme Court of Russia, and theHigh 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 theCivic Chamber of the Russian Federation. In this interview, Malkevich said that Wikipedia (both Russian and others) was becoming a "bridgehead forinformational 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 toNovaya Gazeta, pro-Kremlin structures related toYevgeny Prigozhin are actively involved indoxing "coordinators of an informational attack on Russia", including Wikipedia editors.Novaya Gazeta also reports thatSpecial Communications Service of Russia (a division of theFederal 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 (aboutUS$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 theRusso-Ukrainian War,[16] and two sections of the Russian article aboutVladimir 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]
Part of theRusso-Ukrainian war (2022–present) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Overview |
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Military engagements |
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| War crimes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Reactions |
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Impact |
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Key people |
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Related | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
