In April 2016, the project had 3,377 active editors who made at least five contributions in that month, ranking third behind the English and Spanish versions.

He suggested that this effect is due to overzealous policing of intellectual property rights by the community and bemoaned poor editing skills of some Wikipedians.

The first edit of the Russian Wikipedia was on 24 May 2001, and consisted of the line "Россия – великая страна" ("Russia is a great nation").

[28] On 10 July 2012, Russian Wikipedia closed access to its content for 24 hours in protest against proposed amendments to Russia's Information Act (Bill No.

Among other things, the bill stipulates the creation and country-wide enforcement of blacklists, which would block access to forbidden sites.

[citation needed] Supporters of the amendment stated that it is aimed only at widely prohibited content such as child pornography and similar information, but the Russian Wikimedia chapter has declared that conditions for determining the content falling under this law will create a thing like the "great Chinese firewall".

They further claimed that existing Russian legal practice demonstrates a high likelihood of a worst-case scenario, resulting in a country-wide ban of Wikipedia.

[8] On 10 July, Nikolai Nikiforov, Russian Minister for Telecommunications and Mass Media announced in his Twitter account, that the organization of the List of the prohibited websites (that was sited on the Law Project No.

[36] In December 2023, the Russian Wikimedia chapter voted unanimously to dissolve itself after its director had been warned by authorities that he would be designated a "foreign agent".

[44] On 28 February 2023, the Wikimedia Foundation was fined another 2 million rubles after accusations of refusal to delete what the court called "misinformation".

[45] On 14 April 2023, a similar fine of 2 million rubles was imposed over an article on the Russian occupation of Zaporizhzhia Oblast.

In particular, Valery Fadeyev and Igor Ashmanov, members of the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights, called on 4 April 2023 to block the access because of "systemic bias".

[47] On 24 May 2023, long-time Wikimedia RU director Vladimir V. Medeyko announced "Рувики" ("Ruviki"), a fork of Russian Wikipedia.

[48] In 2021, historian Maksym Potapenko and Doctor of Political Science Mateusz Kamionka conducted a study on editing the texts of articles about Crimea since its annexation by Russia.