Wikimedia Russia Shuts Down, Putting Local Site in Peril

Stanislav Kozlovskiy, an associate professor of neuroscience at Moscow State University, was lecturing in Azerbaijan shortly before Christmas when he got an urgent message to return to Moscow and report to his school’s administrators. When he arrived, Kozlovskiy says he was told that the government was about to list him as a “foreign agent.” His bosses gave him a choice: resign or be fired—after nearly 25 years at the university. He chose to resign.

Kozlovskiy’s “crime,” as best he can understand it, is that he’s the director of Wikimedia Russia, an organization created 16 years ago to support and promote Wikipedia in the country. For more than a decade, Vladimir Putin’s government has led a campaign against the global encyclopedia, saying it defies restrictions on what can be published about sensitive topics such as the invasion of Ukraine. That campaign has included a drumbeat of criticism from politicians, including Putin himself, accusing Wikipedia of aiding state enemies, as well as repeated fines on the San Francisco-based Wikimedia Foundation, which maintains Wikipedia’s global infrastructure. (The foundation has declined to pay the fines.)