# Ruwiki (Wikipedia fork)

Ruwiki (Russian: Рувики, romanized: Ruviki) is a Russian multilingual online encyclopedia, with editions in Russian and other languages of the Russian Federation. It was launched in June 24, 2023 as a fork of the Russian-language Wikipedia, and has been described by media as "Putin-friendly" and "Kremlin-compliant". As well as a "[Russian] state-sponsored encyclopedia that is a clone of the original Russian Wikipedia but which conveniently has been edited to omit things that could cast the Russian government in poor light." A full-scale launch took place on 15 January 2024.
The project is led by Vladimir Medeyko, who was formerly involved with the Russian Wikipedia project and a director of Wikimedia Russia. Medeyko reportedly created the project as an alternative to the Russian Wikipedia, which would be more friendly to the Russian government.
The words "рувики" and its English version, "ruwiki", have long been used to refer to Russian Wikipedia among Wikipedians.

## History

On 24 May 2023, long-time Wikimedia RU director Vladimir Medeyko announced Ruwiki as a Russian fork of Wikipedia on the Russian technology website Habr. The Russian politician Anton Gorelkin stated that the new "ruviki" website would be hosted on Russian servers and managed by a Russian organization. Medeyko has stated that Ruwiki will follow Russian laws, but is independent of the Russian government.
Russian Wikipedia contributors were shocked that Medeyko left the project he had been involved in since 2003, and were even more stunned when he said that his reason for leaving was to create a competitor to Wikipedia for the benefit of the government of Russia. The project's name, Ruwiki, is widely used by contributors to Russian Wikipedia and other Wikimedia Foundation projects to refer to Russian Wikipedia itself, which has drawn criticism from Wikipedians.
In late May 2023, Stanislav Kozlovsky, then executive director of Wikimedia RU, stated that "anyone can take Wikipedia content and use it, it's perfectly normal. It's not normal to use the authority of the director of Wikimedia RU for this purpose and to do it in secret for several years".
On August 21, 2023, without further announcement, user registration was opened for everyone on Ruwiki.
At the end of November 2023, five new editions of Ruwiki were added: Bashkir, Mari, Sakha, Tatar and Chechen.
In December 2023, Ruwiki signed a long-term cooperation agreement with the Museum of Moscow.
On December 28, 2023, six new editions of Ruwiki were added: Altai, Tuvan, Mokshan, Udmurt, Chuvash and Erzyan.
In April 2024, Ruwiki launched new editions in Buryat, Veps, Ingush, Kalmyk, Komi, Permian Komi, Livvian-Karelian and Khakas languages with a total number of articles in the new sections exceeding 29 thousand, the website interface was improved and portals with materials for preparation for the Unified State Exam and Basic State Exam were launched.
In August 2024, the Hill Mari language edition of Ruwiki was launched.
In October 2024, the portal launched a mechanism for forming answers to questions based on the YandexGPT neural network trained on Ruwiki articles, providing the user with information, references to relevant source articles and articles for a more complete familiarization. During the same month, the materials from the Great Russian Encyclopedia were incorporated into the Ruwiki portal.

## Content and editorial policy

Ruwiki was created by copying all 1.9 million articles from the Russian Wikipedia, as well as several media components from Wikimedia Commons, and data items from Wikidata. However, articles containing content contrary to the Russian government's official line have been removed. Removals of content considered "anti-Russian propaganda" include coverage of the Russo-Ukrainian War, the Wagner rebellion, and criticism of Vladimir Putin.
In mid-July 2023, Ruwiki was not yet editable by third parties. Medeyko had stated that he planned to allow public editing to resume, but that content will be vetted by panels of experts. As of August 2023, Ruwiki was available to edit by all registered accounts. Analysis from the independent Russian media outlet Mediazona shows that the majority of Ruwiki edits take place during weekday work hours. Mediazona deduces that teams of paid writers are responsible for Ruwiki’s editorial activity, which contrasts with Wikipedia’s volunteer model.

## Finances

There is no reliable data on the source of funding for Ruwiki. Vladimir Medeyko reports the presence of private investors, but does not disclose them, indicating that there is a corresponding agreement with investors. According to Vladimir Medeyko, the project receives money from wealthy investors with whom he is pleased to cooperate, who understand Ruwiki's tasks and share the project's goals. Edits made by several administrators in the article about Naila Asker-Zadeh, as well as some other facts indicate a possible connection between Ruwiki and VTB Bank. The money was presumably allocated with the expectation of the future commercial success of the project: if the site becomes popular, it will be possible to earn money through ads. Vladimir Medeyko notes that investors expect to make a profit, but they are very interested in what is realized in Ruwiki - free content, access to knowledge for everyone.
Ruwiki has launched an active advertising campaign: It purchases advertising from popular bloggers (e.g., Alexander Pushny, on the channel "Cosmos Just"), since spring 2024 it has been advertised on numerous street banners in 19 Russian cities (including Moscow, Rostov-on-Don, Omsk, Krasnoyarsk), and one of the trains of the Sokolnicheskaya line of the Moscow Metro was decorated for 6 months as a themed "Ruwiki's Cognitive Train". Also in support of outdoor advertising, similarly styled banners were developed for demonstration on digital platforms. Interesting facts appeared on the homepage of Yandex, on the websites of Lenta.ru, Gismeteo, Afisha and others. One Ruwiki employee told the publication Point that authors who write articles in Ruwiki for payment also advertise the site on social networks, leaving positive one-size-fits-all comments from fake profiles.

## Public launch

In January 2024, it was reported that Ruwiki would enter full public service on Monday, 15 January. Ruwiki confirmed the statements shortly thereafter, announcing the "end of beta testing on January 15, 2024". Public launch happened in June 24, 2023, following a heavy advertisement campaign in Russia.

## Similar projects

There were other Russian encyclopedic projects advertised as an alternative to Wikipedia: an online portal to Great Russian Encyclopedia and a wiki (Znanie.wiki) by the Znanie Society [ru] ("Knowledge Society"), inherited from the Soviet times.

## Censorship

According to Medeyko, Ruwiki is supposed to comply with both Russian legislation and the principle of presentation from a neutral point of view. It is claimed that the project does not have censorship, and the content can be devoted to any topic, as long as it does not violate the legislation of the Russian Federation. However, in the Internet community, the creation of Ruwiki was perceived as a "censored analogue of Wikipedia". It is noted that the essence of the Ruwiki concept is manifested in articles devoted to modern politics (primarily Russia's foreign policy). At the same time, the emphasis is shifted in the opposite direction from the Wikipedia articles.

### Facts removal

Ruwiki cleaned up an article about the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by the British writer George Orwell, the plot of which many observers compared to what is happening in Putin's Russia. For example, the description of the Ministry of Truth was removed from the article: "The Ministry of Truth ("mini-rights"), the place of work of the protagonist of the novel, is engaged in the continuous falsification of various historical information (statistical data, historical facts) at all levels of informing the population: in the media, books, education, art, sports. Even in chess: for example, at the end of the novel, Winston solves a chess study from a book where impossible moves are indicated. The article "A321 crash landing near Zhukovsky", which described the incident with the landing of a civilian aircraft in a cornfield in 2019, after which Russian President Vladimir Putin awarded the crew medals was also censored. However, Ruwiki removed criticism of the aircraft crew's actions by aviation experts. In the article about Yevgeny Prigozhin, among other things, information about Prigozhin's recruitment of Russian prisoners for the war with Ukraine was deleted.
The articles "human rights in Russia," "freedom of speech in Russia," "censorship in Russia," and "political prisoner" have been greatly reduced.
The Economist has noticed the following:
* the article "Kherson" does not mention neither the battles for the city in 2022 neither the Russian shelling after deoccupation;
* the article about the Katyn massacre of Polish officers expresses doubt about the authenticity of documents pointing at the role of the NKVD;
* all references to Alexei Navalny call him a blogger, not an oppositionist.
At some point in April 2024, tracking edits was difficult: the functionality that allows comparing two arbitrary versions of an article was excluded from the edit history. According to Alexander Sergeyev, "Ruwiki is censorship in its purest form, it's not a collective of authors, but a collective of censors to clean up Wikipedia".

### Anti-Ukrainian propaganda

Ruwiki has been noted for containing anti-Ukrainian propaganda.
When Ruwiki was created, articles on topics that were banned by the Russian authorities, such as the massacre in Bucha and the Ukrainian chant "Putin khuylo!", were removed from the list of articles taken from the Russian Wikipedia; as of July 2023, they are not there. The Ruwiki article about the Wagner PMC does not mention the June mutiny, and the article about Russia's invasion of Ukraine does not use the word "invasion", instead using the expression "military operation." In January 2024, Vyorstka journalists who studied an array of articles on Ruwiki found references to the Russian occupation of Ukrainian cities, the disputed status of Crimea, and links to sources recognized in Russia as "foreign agents" and "undesirable organizations" in Russia. Just a few hours after the article was published, all references to the occupation of Ukrainian territories and disputed Crimea were removed from Ruwiki's articles in the publication. The drafts of two articles with the titles "Torture, castration and murder of a prisoner of war in the Privolye sanatorium" and Putin's Palace were deleted by the administrators, one of whom had previously edited the article about the journalist Naila Asker-Zade, removing the word "propaganda" from the text and the mention of Asker-Zade's illegitimate partner, the head of VTB Andrei Kostin.
The facts on certain topics, mainly related to Ukrainian politics and the Russo-Ukrainian war are presented selectively. For example, the promise in Vladimir Putin's statement about not occupying the territory of Ukraine, which was subsequently not fulfilled, is not included. Many events accompanying the military actions are not mentioned, in particular the failures of Russian plans (the offensive on Kyiv, the expansion of the border with NATO). Articles contain false information, while being illogical and internally contradictory, even the discussion pages have comments with proposal to determine in the article whether the events are "fake" or "a consequence of the actions of "Azov"".
* the Bucha massacre is called an incident;
* an article about the Neo-Nazism in Ukraine in Ruwiki claims that neo-Nazism has become part of state policy in Ukraine since 2014;
* an article about the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy has a section "Role in the glorification of neo-Nazism in Ukraine";
* an article about the change of power in Ukraine in February 2014 calls it unconstitutional;
* Euromaidan is called a coup d'etat with a reference to the opinion of "many experts" and an article in the propaganda media RIA Novosti; however, the text of the state agency itself does not contain any references to experts;
* an article about Russia's invasion of Ukraine is almost completely rewritten using narratives of Russian propaganda, including false statements.