As many as 105,889 times in the first two weeks of March, the file containing 'Russian' Wikipedia, or the content of the free digital encyclopedia created by volunteers in the Russian language since 2001, was downloaded. Fearing that they would no longer be able to access its web pages, just as they can no longer access Instagram and Facebook, Russians have rushed to download this popular repository of various knowledge, as well as a plethora of unverified information.
Russian downloads, as reported by the digital magazine Slate, now account for 42 percent of total traffic on Kiwix servers compared to two percent in 2021. Incidentally, Kiwix is a free open-source web browser launched fifteen years ago primarily to enable offline access to Wikipedia, and many users utilize it to download its articles.
To hide their location and thus avoid potential problems, many users also employ VPNs or the TOR browser, so the downloads in recent weeks are certainly much higher. Similar to what Turks did in 2017, Venezuelans in 2019, and several times the Chinese faced with censorship in their countries, many Russians have quietly decided to wait for the authorities’ decisions with the content saved on their devices.
Roskomnadzor, the Kremlin agency that enforces censorship, had not blocked Wikipedia by the time this text was written, although it warned that it might do so because it disapproves of the article on the invasion of Ukraine.
