With the outflow of a lot of Western technology from Russia after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, one of Vladimir Putin's priorities was the achievement of "digital sovereignty" 1.It's home-made tech (and tech companies) that can't be pulled apart by Western rivals when Russia does something to make them uncomfortable.

Efforts to digital sovereignty have taken many forms, including banning VPNs, investigating the possibility of a national game engine, and even creating a Russian valve. But it also takes the form of Ruwiki (via404), a self-censoring domestic alternative to Wikipedia that copies a vast range of content that has quietly excised all politically dangerous content.

Ruwiki is managed by former Wikimedia ru Head Vladimir Medeyko. Wikimedia RU, the Russian branch of the Wikimedia Foundation, was hastily shut down last year after Stanislav Kozlovsky was recognized for risking being added to the Russian government's list of "foreign agents" and forced to resign from his 25—year post at Moscow State University. 

Medeyko has not experienced such trouble, and to his new position in ruwiki promises to take the old Wikipedia "in another direction". In a post announcing the launch of the project, he claimed that it was not financially supported by the Russian state, but "an investor who believes in the project.""All its servers and data are stored in Russia. It launched completely back in May, but really came to my attention thanks to the 404 report.

Its different directions, as you can imagine, conform much more to the general tone of modern Russian propaganda than you can find on Wikipedia. For example, Ruwiki's article on Yevgeny Prigozhin, the departing leader of the Wagner Private Military Company, is considerably shorter than the Russian version of Wikipedia. 

Where the Wikipedia version says "the order to kill Prigozhin was almost certainly given by Putin", Ruwiki simply points out that Prigozhin died in a plane crash and Putin extended his condolences. The article about the crash itself is a similarly précised version of events and speculation surrounding Prigozhin's death.

A similar quirk of editing and emphasis can be found throughout the website. The article on the poisoning of Sergei Skripal, a former Russian spy who worked as a British double agent, went for a very long time to express Russia's official views on the issue and referred to the joint statement of the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany and France, which pointed the finger at Russia as the person responsible for the attack from the "Position of other countries" section. It is omitted. 

Similarly, the entry on Russia's invasion of Ukraine has been edited as expected: the article itself is entitled "Military Operations in Ukraine (from 2022)", an official euphemism for the war that has unfolded since the beginning of the Russian government.

For now, Ruwiki exists alongside the Russian version of Wikipedia and continues after the closure of Wikimedia RU, but how true it is is anyone's guess. Wikipedia is a regular target of attacks by the Russian government, and the state said it had no plans to block the website on May 4 last year, but that was before Ruwiki got off the ground.