Russia launched Runiversalis, an electronic encyclopedia designed to replace Wikipedia for Russians. On the main page , in particular, there is a block with articles about the war in Ukraine. On this site, the war is called only a "special operation", articles are devoted to the successes of the Russian military and their conquests in the territory occupied by Russia.
It also contains news from the propaganda media about the new holidays that Vladimir Putin is establishing, the start of the All-Russian Spartakiad and the new “naval doctrine” of the Russian Federation. The service runs on a wiki engine. Encyclopedia servers are located in Russia. The pages of "Runiversalis" are edited "in accordance with the requirements of the legislation of the Russian Federation and with respect for traditional values."
According to State Duma deputy Anton Gorelkin, all attempts "to give articles a left-liberal and Western-centric bias will be stopped."
On Wikipedia itself, an article about the creation of "Runiversalis" as an analogue also appeared, but it was quickly deleted due to "an article created for vandalism, without encyclopedic content." Shortly after the publication of the material, the Runiversalis website itself became unavailable. A message about a DDoS attack appeared in the Telegram channel of the same name.
The draft law on the creation of a domestic analogue of Wikipedia was developed back in 2019, it was prepared by the Ministry of Communications. In 2016, Alexander Visly, then director of the National Library of Russia, said that this resource would become a domestic “rival to Wikipedia.” It was planned to allocate money for development from the state budget.
In April, Roskomnadzor sent a request to the Wikipedia administration to remove a number of materials related to the war in Ukraine. “The authors of articles posted on Wikipedia deliberately misinform users of the Internet resource with frankly false information. In the articles published on the resource, an exclusively anti-Russian interpretation of events is promoted, ”the demand says. It was not fulfilled.
