This Ukrainian Group Is Using Wikipedia as a Weapon against Russian Propaganda

On February 24th 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. Days after, media project Ukrainian Witness started to fight back digitally.

In Russia, it’s hard to find the truth. The free press is blocked, Google is blocked, and so are most social media channels. However, there’s one route that remains open: Wikipedia. 'Everyone' can change a Wikipedia page. That’s the way in for Ukrainian Witness. Every month, 10.9 million Russians visit Russian Wikipedia. So, by simply adding pictures of the devastation on Ukrainian cities to the Russian Wikipedia pages, the truth is revealed. 

Unfortunately, Russian bots started deleting these pictures. To win this fight, Ukrainian Witness called for help and collaborated with Wikipedia editors around the world to keep making changes, and to make them last.

It worked. For the first time in the history of Wikipedia, editors around the world united and joined the cause: editing Russian pages on Ukrainian cities and bringing the truth to Russia.

The number of editors bringing the truth doubled. The total amount of edits they made also doubled. Russian views on the ten biggest Ukrainian city pages on the Russian Wikipedia increased by 242%, turning an online encyclopedia into an uncensored and trustworthy news channel. 

The project was created by Publicis Benelux.