A Moscow court has fined Wikipedia operator Wikimedia Foundation 3 million rubles (about $38,300) on charges of “propaganda of pedophilia,” the independent news outlet Mediazona reported Monday.
The Tagansky District Court did not specify which Wikipedia articles prompted the case or what content was deemed illegal.
This is at least the seventh administrative case the court has heard against the Wikimedia Foundation in the past seven years, according to Mediazona.
Previous fines have targeted the foundation over Wikipedia entries on Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and Japanese author Wataru Tsurumi’s book “The Complete Manual of Suicide.”
The Wikimedia Foundation’s Russian division announced its closure in December 2023, though its director said the Russian-language version of Wikipedia would continue operating.
Russia’s communications watchdog Roskomnadzor previously accused Wikipedia of spreading “false” information about the war in Ukraine.
Amid an ongoing wartime crackdown on dissent, fears have grown that Russian authorities may block access to the site altogether. Officials have long pushed for a domestic alternative to the online encyclopedia, citing alleged Western bias, but those efforts have failed to gain traction.
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