On February 24, 2022 Russia invades Ukraine. Days after the first shock, Ukrainian Witness started to fight back digitally. Due to propaganda, Russians hardly hear the truth. Free press is blocked, as are most social media channels. But Wikipedia is still online. We used this platform to sneak the truth about the war into Russia. Simply by adding pictures of devastated and destructed Ukrainian cities onto Ukrainian city pages on the Russian Wikipedia. Turning an online encyclopedia into an uncensored news channel.
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. That increased by 242% from 3.9 million to 13.3 million views. This is how we turned an online encyclopedia into an uncensored news channel.
