Héloïse Goy, with Alexis Patri 10:02 a.m., April 04, 2022
After threats and then bans and blockages against social networks, the Russian dictator is now attacking Wikipedia.
The collaborative encyclopedia is guilty of not serving the Kremlin's propaganda on the war in Ukraine.
She faces a fine of several million rubles.
Russians can no longer freely access Instagram and Facebook.
They may soon no longer have access to Wikipedia.
The collaborative encyclopedia is indeed in the sights of the Russian authorities.
In a note published on Thursday, the Russian media regulator accused Wikipedia of misinformation and blamed it for not removing so-called "illegal information" posted on its pages.
Information that mainly concerns the war in Ukraine.
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100,000 Russian Wikipedia downloads
Since the vote of a new law of censorship, only the expression “military operation” is the only one authorized to speak about the war in Ukraine.
By not respecting this law, Wikipedia incurs a fine of 4 million rubles, that is to say more than 40,000 euros.
In reality, the platform risks above all, like the social networks before it, a blockage in the country.
But, faced with the Kremlin, Wikipedia does not give in.
A month ago, the Russian authorities had already asked the encyclopedia to remove the mention of the number of war victims.
"We will not back down in the face of censorship and intimidation efforts by members of our movement," Wikipedia reacted in a statement.
Faced with the risk of blocking the site, more than 100,000 Russian Internet users have downloaded an offline copy of all Russian articles from Wikipedia in recent weeks.