A Moscow court on Thursday again fined Wikipedia for a Russian-language article it refused to remove about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the latest in a series of government moves to silence objective reporting or criticism of the war and restrict the Russian public’s access to information.
A Moscow court on Thursday again fined Wikipedia for a Russian-language article it refused to remove about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the latest in a series of government moves to silence objective reporting or criticism of the war and restrict the Russian public’s access to information.
The court fined Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that runs the free, publicly-edited online encyclopedia, 2 million rubles ($24,464) for not removing a Wikipedia article titled “Russian occupation of the Zaporizhzhia region,” a reference to one of four Ukrainian provinces that Russia annexed last September. Most countries have condemned the annexation, as well as that by Russia in 2014 of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, as illegal.
The state Tass news agency said the Wikimedia Foundation had failed to heed the demands of Russia’s state communications watchdog Roskomnadzor to remove articles containing “false information.
