Brief:

Ukrainian Witness is an NGO that draws attention to the war in Ukraine worldwide. it also aims to help inhabitants of the Russian Federation against misinformation.

Right after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, a question arose at Ukrainian Witness: How to get the truth into Russia since Russians were kept completely ignorant of the severity of the devastation of the war.

Objective:

Deliver the truth into Russia and fight against propaganda.

Challenge:

In Russia, free press and almost all social channels are blocked.

Due to media restrictions in Russia, its inhabitants lack acces to independent press and trustworthy news. Most (western orientated) social channels are either blocked or heavily restricted. So, the ‘truth’ in Russia is what people see on state television. But people living in restricted societies often seek ways to find the truth. Therefore, the open-to-all platform Wikipedia is the ultimate channel to feed Russian pages about Ukrainian cities with the truth. Just by showing it. The results speak for themselves (an increase of 242% of Russian viewers on the ten biggest Ukrainian city page alone). So, in a totalitarian state, WikiTruth gave the Russian people a unique view of Putin’s so-called ‘special operation’.

With more Russians facing and spreading the truth - the fewer followers of the Russian propaganda. And more desire for justice.

In Russia, free press and almost all social channels are blocked. However, there is one medium that is still accessible and open to adding or changing information and that is Wikipedia. After all, anyone can act as an editor.

In Russia, Wikipedia is consulted by 10.9 million unique visitors a month. So, the idea of posting photos about the devastation on the Russian Wikipedia pages of Ukrainian cities was born.

Where you'd normally see beautiful pictures of city landmarks, now you can also see pictures of these landmarks after being devastated and destroyed by the war, showing the stark contrast between what Russians are used to think about the war, and what is the pure reality behind it. This way, the truth was delivered to millions of Russian people.

Right after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, a question arose at Ukrainian Witness: how they could use their expertise to support Ukraine? How to get the truth into Russia since Russians were kept completely ignorant of the severity of the devastation of the war.

One thing is for sure, in times of war and crises, people feel the urge to seek information. And since the Russian people hardly have access to trustworthy information, the strategy is to bring it to them.

Target audience:

inhabitants of the Russian Federation.

The approach was to work around the Kremlin's tight censorship, using one of the few still uncensored media channels: Wikipedia.

The idea of using the uncensored Wikipedia encyclopedia, accessible to every Russian, to show the reality of the devastation of Ukrainian cities - thus evading censorship - is unique. And the idea worked. It got noticed by the Kremlin. Because Russian bots deleted our efforts. So, we had to mobilize the worldwide Wiki community and the world's most influential Wikipedia editors to join the cause.

The call to #wikipedians to help replace deleted photos found a wide response, and with 13.3 million Russian views for the edited pages of the 10 largest Ukrainian cities, a mass audience was confronted with images that before were hidden from them.

It started days after the invasion and still lasts until this day. After all, the fight to keep spreading the truth isn't over yet.

The aim was to confront residents of the Russian Federation with the reality of the destruction of Ukrainian cities.

A good indication of the result achieved can be derived from the visits to the Russian Wikipedia pages of the 10 largest Ukrainian cities.

From WikiMedia Statistics (https://pageviews.wmcloud.org) based on the Wikipedia pages of the ten biggest Ukrainian cities (Kyiv, Odessa, Mariupol, Kherson, Donetsk, Kharkiv, Lviv, Lugansk, Bucha, Dnipro), we learned that:

• the number of Wikipedia editors bringing the truth into Russia doubled: 850 editors in 2022, compared to 485 in 2021.

• the amount of edits they made, more than doubled: 2672 in 2022 compared to 1247 in 2021.

• the total amount of Russian viewers who are confronted with the truth on these pages, went up by an amazing 242%. 13.3 million in 2022 compared to 3.9 million in 2021.

Russian propaganda makes the Russian people being disconnected from the truth. Especially at the moment when there is a war going on, we needed to act immediately and tactically.