A court in Moscow fined the Wikimedia Foundation, which owns the Russian-language Wikipedia, 2 million rubles for refusing to remove materials about three military units of the Russian Armed Forces. It is reported by TASS.
“The court ruled that the Wikimedia Foundation was found guilty under Part 2 of Art. 13.41 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation (failure to delete prohibited information) and impose a fine of 2 million rubles,” judge Timur Vakhrameev read out the decision.
As follows from the materials of the case announced during the meeting, the reason for this decision was the refusal of the Wikipedia administrators to remove articles about the 74th Guards Motorized Rifle Brigade, the 138th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade, the 92nd Missile Brigade, as well as materials about military operations on Ukraine.
It follows from the case file that earlier Roskomnadzor sent notifications to the Wikimedia Foundation about the need to remove articles about these three brigades, as they contain information about their deployment and other information, the publication of which damages the defense capability of the Russian Federation. Also, Roskomnadzor demanded to remove articles about the hostilities near Kharkov, Lisichansk and Mariupol, as they contain false information. However, these materials were not removed, and an administrative offense report was drawn up against Wikimedia. The official representative of Wikipedia, Alexander Ganzer, said in court that these articles were written on the basis of open sources and information from international organizations, including the results of meetings of the UN General Assembly, and therefore they cannot harm the interests of the Russian Federation. Based on this, the representative of the Internet encyclopedia demanded that the case be dropped.
In April 2022, the same court fined the Wikimedia Foundation 5 million rubles for refusing to remove articles about the events in Bucha, the destruction of a hospital and theater in Mariupol, and the manufacture of gunpowder. According to Roskomnadzor, banned materials remain on the Wikipedia portal, including fakes about the course of a special military operation on the territory of Ukraine. In this regard, the Wikimedia Foundation will be marked in search engines as a violator of Russian law.
Wikimedia Foundation Inc. is a non-profit organization registered as a charitable foundation in the United States. The organization is known as a platform for Wikipedia and related projects.
Source: Rosbalt
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