The Wikimedia Foundation was fined three million rubles due to its refusal to remove information about the Azov regiment.

A magistrate in Moscow fined the Wikimedia Foundation, which supports Wikipedia, three million rubles under the article on failure to remove prohibited information (Part 2 of Article 13.41 of the Administrative Code). Interfax reports this.

The fine was imposed by the magistrate of court district No. 422 of the Tagansky district. The reason for this was the refusal to delete information about the Ukrainian Azov regiment banned in the Russian Federation, RusNews clarifies .

Wikimedia has been fined for at least the ninth time.

The first time the foundation was fined was on April 26, 2022, when the reason was seven publications, including about the victims in Bucha . Then, in November 2022, the organization was fined because of two more publications about the war, and in February 2023, because of articles about military units of the Russian Federation. On April 13 and April 20, the fund was given two more fines - due to articles about the battles in the Sumy region and the occupation of the Zaporozhye region. On April 25, the fund was fined two million due to failure to remove material about a banned song by the group “Psyche”; on the same day, the company was also fined due to an article about the religious organization “Tablighi Jamaat”. Already on April 27, the foundation was fined again because of an article about the 40th Engineer Regiment.

• In May 2022, Roskomnadzor demanded that articles about the war in Ukraine be removed from the English-language Wikipedia. Then in July he obliged search engines to label the online encyclopedia in search results as a violator of Russian laws. The agency also called Wikipedia “a new line of constant information attacks on Russians.”