Russia is reportedly moving forward with plans to replace Wikipedia with a state-run online encyclopedia as part of a broader push to create a “sovereign internet.”
According to media reports, the Russian government intends to invest roughly $30 million to establish this domestic encyclopedia and to create a dedicated department responsible for populating it with officially verified content.
President Vladimir Putin is said to view Wikipedia as a source of misinformation. Given his background as a former foreign intelligence officer and the documented history of Russian disinformation campaigns, critics see this initiative as aligned with long-standing efforts to control the information environment.
Wikipedia, a community-driven platform, has occasionally hosted inaccurate or manipulated entries—ranging from harmless pranks to entries with potentially harmful misinformation. Rights groups and free-expression advocates worry that creating a state-controlled alternative will limit access to independent information for Russian citizens and serve as a tool for censorship.
Russia has a precedent for restricting online information. In 2015, Roskomnadzor, the federal agency that oversees media and the internet, ordered internet service providers to block a Wikipedia page about charas, a form of cannabis oil, asserting the article provided instructions on how to produce the drug. That same year, Russia also blocked Reddit after a post discussed hallucinogenic mushrooms.
More recently, Russian authorities have intensified measures to control internet access nationwide and to develop infrastructure capable of operating independently from the global internet if necessary. This effort is commonly referred to as creating a “sovereign internet.”
Unplugging from the global internet
In early 2019, reports indicated Russia planned experiments to temporarily disconnect from the global internet to test whether its networks and services could continue to function in isolation. The motivation behind these tests stems from concerns that international control of domain name and routing systems—operated mainly from organizations outside Russia—could leave the country vulnerable to external disconnection.
A proposed legal framework, discussed under the Digital Economy National Program, would require Russian ISPs to ensure they can maintain operations if foreign actors attempt to isolate the nation from the international web.
Another trial instructed ISPs to reroute traffic through government-controlled routing points to enable filtering and censorship similar to China’s Great Firewall. That architecture could also be used to redirect traffic from international services—such as Wikipedia—to state-run alternatives.
Although conventional military conflict has been limited in recent decades, cyber operations have been a persistent arena of international tension. High-profile attacks on critical infrastructure and coordinated disinformation efforts have been attributed to actors linked to Russian state-sponsored groups, fueling concerns among other nations about the risks posed by cyber offensive activity.
International organizations and alliances, including NATO, have responded by developing stronger cyberdefense and deterrence policies. NATO has discussed offensive and defensive cyber principles and warned that a sufficiently severe cyberattack might trigger collective defense mechanisms. While Article 5 of the NATO treaty—declaring an attack on one member an attack on all—has rarely been invoked, allied leaders have made clear that cyber incidents are a core consideration in future response planning.
As Russia advances plans for a state-controlled encyclopedia and experiments with internet autonomy, the move raises important questions about information access, media freedom, and how governments may shape public knowledge in an increasingly connected world.