The pages of Wikipedia were banned in Russia for a brief period of time due to a page relating to the use of "charas," a form of cannabis.
According to TechCrunch, the Russian government ordered a Russian communications agency called the Roskomnadzor, to block all pages of Wikipedia in Russia due to their denied request to remove the particular page about preparation of the said drug.
According to Time, Russia had recently written into law a ban of websites which showed information and images containing hate, drugs and suicide, reason why the said Wikipedia page was blocked for a few hours.
"We first learned about a possible block last week, when Roskomnadzor issued a notice regarding an article on Russian Wikipedia about charas, a form of cannabis," the Wikimedia Foundation told TechCrunch. "The notice stated that the article contained information on how to prepare the substance. The notice directed Wikipedia to remove the article."
The reason for the denial of the Russian government's request, according to the statement, is because it was against the website's vision.
"Censorship of Wikipedia content runs contrary to the Wikimedia vision: a world in which everyone can freely access the sum of all knowledge," the statement read.
On the other hand, journalist Andrei Soldatov said the Wikipedia Russia block came because like most secure websites, it employs an https protocol, which means that the Russian internet surveillance system called SORM cannot snoop in on people's online movements.
"This is an important case because it's part of the general offensive against https. Roskomnadzor and the FSB (security) don't know what to do with it," Soldatov said, as reported by The Guardian.
Soldatov also theorized that it was the Russian government's strategy to force Wikipedia to take their website off https, since https websites get entirely blocked even though only one page of the entire site was blocked.
