
Russia has no plans to block Wikipedia “yet,” its digital affairs minister said on Tuesday, as a Moscow court imposed a new fine on the online encyclopedia for failing to remove content Russia considers illegal, Reuters reported.
Wikipedia is one of the few independent sources of information left in Russia after the state stepped up its crackdown on online content after Moscow sent its armed forces into Ukraine.
“We are not blocking Wikipedia yet, there are no such plans at the moment,” Interfax quoted Digital Affairs Minister Maksut Shadayev as saying.
In an emailed statement, Wikipedia said it “will continue to provide access to Wikipedia to Russian-speaking people around the world who find value in the site, and will strive to protect everyone’s right to access.”
On Tuesday, a Moscow court fined Wikipedia’s owner, the Wikimedia Foundation, 800,000 rubles ($9,777).
Wikimedia previously said that the information complained of by the Russian authorities was well-documented and met Wikipedia’s standards.
Russia has been trying to launch its own online encyclopedia for years, but has not achieved much success.
Similarly, Russia is trying to create a video hosting service comparable to Alphabet’s YouTube that remains accessible while other foreign social media platforms are blocked.
Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, said on Tuesday that a court ordered Google to pay 1 billion rubles for blocking the Duma TV YouTube channel.
“Today, the judicial enforcement service began to seize property in search of these funds,” Volodin said.
Google in Russia did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Interfax news agency later reported that Roskomnadzor tried to fine Google up to 4 million rubles for refusing to remove content banned in Russia. The case will be heard in the Moscow court on April 20.
Last September, the court upheld a fine of 21.7 billion rubles against the Russian subsidiary of Google for repeatedly removing information related to the campaign in Ukraine.
The subsidiary filed for bankruptcy after authorities seized its bank account. The American tech giant has suspended its operations in Russia, but free services remain available.
Russia also fined Amazon Twitch 4 million rubles for failing to remove “false information” about the Moscow campaign.
Source: Hot News

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