Russians downloading Wikipedia en masse as possible ban looms

Russia's military invasion of Ukraine is now entering its fourth week with no end in sight. Thanks to Russian President Vladimir Putin's actions, the country has largely been cut off from the West as a result – whether it be through sanctions and boycotts or Russia itself cracking down on its citizens' access to information from the rest of the world.

One source of information that has been specifically targeted by the Kremlin: Wikipedia.

With the realization that this immense source of free knowledge can soon be taken away, those living in Russia are downloadingthe entire Russian version of Wikipedia in order to access the content offline if need be.

Downloading the entirety of Wikipedia sure seems like a tall task. However, Kiwix, an organization that runs a free web browser explicitly made for offline reading, has helped make the process fairly easy. The non-profit has already compiled all 1.8 million articles found in the Russian-language version of Wikipedia as a downloadable torrent. (In case you're wondering, yes, Wikipedia's terms allowthis.) The file comes in at 29 GB.

Reporting for Slate, writer Annie Rauwerdadove into Kiwix's public stats and found that the number of downloads of the Russian-language Wikipedia have spiked in recent weeks. It's already been downloaded 148,457 times this month so far. As Rauwerda points out, that's more than a 4,000 percent uptick in downloads in March when compared to January of this year.

Russia's Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology, and Mass Media (abbreviated as Roskomnadzor), aka its censorship agency, threatenedto block Wikipedia in the country earlier this month. The agency took issue with the Wikipedia entry on the "Russian Invasion of Ukraine (2022)." The Wikipedia page about the events are obviously not following the Kremlin's proposed propaganda surrounding the war, and Russia wants to cut off access to any media that's not following its official narrative.

Wikipedia responded a few days later and rejectedRussia's demand that the free encyclopedia censor itself.

Russia has yet to ban Wikipedia, but many within the country fear the possibility is very real, as Kiwix's download stats bear out. Putin has already bannedsocial media platforms like Facebook and Instagram. Wikipedia can easily be next. It wouldn't bethe first time Russia blocked Wikipedia either.

Kiwix's Wikipedia torrent is one of the many toolsthat Russian citizens have utilized in order to resist becoming completely cut off from the outside world. With entries like "Russian Invasion of Ukraine (2022)" bringing unbiased facts to the people of Russia, it will be hard for Putin to continue to successfully disseminate his own retelling of events. And that's an extremely important aspect in helping end the war, too.