The Russian version of the well-known Wikipedia online encyclopedia, Ruwiki, is scheduled to be live on Monday, according to Russian media.
According to the daily Kommersant, beta testing, or testing the website with a smaller audience, began in the middle of 2023, and there are supposedly more entries on Ruwiki than in the Russian-language section of Wikipedia.
As one of the few independent news sites still operating in Russia following the government crackdown on internet material that followed Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Wikipedia has stated that Russia does not currently have plans to stop it.
However, since then, the online encyclopedia has been hit with many fines by Russian courts over its coverage of Ukraine.
According to Russian media, Russian President Vladimir Putin approved new Wikipedia alternatives in May 2022. In the beta period, users would spend an average of more than six minutes on the site, with a viewing depth of more than five pages.
There’s no public knowledge about Ruwiki founders as they have refused to reveal the project’s total cost or the identities of the website’s backers.
