Mark Bernstein, a prominent Russian Wikipedia editor who is claimed to have modified articles about Russia’s involvement in Ukraine, was apparently arrested in Belarus.
The arrest of the renowned editor was shown in a video posted on a Telegram channel affiliated with Belarusian security agents. He was charged for breaking Russia’s “fake news” law, which was approved in early March, by changing the Wiki article concerning the Ukrainian invasion. Anyone convicted of spreading false information about the Ukraine invasion might face up to 15 years imprisonment under the new law.
Bernstein is rated as one of the top 50 Russian Wikipedia editors. However, according to sources, he was arrested by the Belarusian Main Directorate for Combating Organized Crime and Corruption (GUBOPiK). According to reports, his social media accounts, Wikipedia handle, and workplace were posted on GUBOPiK’s public Telegram channel before his arrest.
It is unclear what charges Bernstein is facing or whether his edits violated Russia’s fake news law. Bernstein has almost 200,000 Wikipedia changes under what appears to be his account, which has now been indefinitely disabled.
Russia has been trying to silence sources of information that contradict its official narrative of the Ukraine war, and its new rule has pushed local independent media sites to close. The editor-in-chief of the Russian daily Novaya Gazeta, Dmitri A. Muratov, said in an interview that “everything that’s not propaganda is being eliminated.”
