The Russian service of the BBC compared articles about all deputies of the State Duma of the current convocation (most of whom are up for re-election) in Wikipedia and in its near-state clone “Ruviki” - and discovered a parallel “ruviki” reality in which inconvenient facts disappear from biographies.
In September, Russia elects a new State Duma. In search of information about this, voters may stumble upon Ruviki, a near-government clone of Wikipedia, which was advertised through the State Services website.
Ruvika is based on edited articles from Wikipedia. We tell you which deputies' biographies have been cleaned up the most and what exactly they are trying to hide from readers.
We divided the Wikipedia articles about all 453 deputies into proposals and looked at which of them did not reach Ruvika. The percentage next to the last name shows the percentage of text removed.
1st place: Adam Delimkhanov, United Russia
Deputy from Chechnya, Hero of Russia and ally of Ramzan Kadyrov: in 2009, Kadyrov directly named Delimkhanov as his successor. 56% of what Wikipedia knows about Delimkhanov was missing from the Ruvika article.
Information about Delimkhanov’s work as a driver for field commander Salman Raduev in the 1990s has disappeared. The mention of an international search has disappeared: in April 2009, Interpol became interested in the deputy because of the case of the murder of Kadyrov’s opponent Sulim Yamadayev in Dubai. The accusations of the brother of the murdered man also disappeared: Isa Yamadayev told Moskovsky Komsomolets that in Chechnya Delimkhanov is called the Executioner because he “leads executions and kidnappings.”
There is no information about the Duma fight on December 3, 2013 with deputy Alexei Zhuravlev, during which, according to the latter, Delimkhanov’s golden pistol fell out.
The reasons for the 2014 American sanctions against Delimkhanov were removed: the US Treasury Department then pointed out his connection with the criminal community “Brotherly Circle”. The threats to “cut off the heads” of the family of the disgraced Chechen judge Yangulbaev have been removed - Delimkhanov expressed them on Instagram. Ruviki also contains no information from Human Rights Watch about the deputy’s possible involvement in war crimes in Mariupol.
Publicly, Delimkhanov almost did not comment on the accusations, but there were exceptions. Thus, he repeatedly declared his non-involvement in the murder of Yamadayev and promised to sue the Dubai police who were investigating the case. In 2012, Interpol stopped searching for him.
2nd place: Igor Ananskikh, “A Just Russia”
In the Duma from 2011, until 2015 - head of the sports committee (then in the LDPR faction, now with the Socialist-Revolutionaries).
As of 2013, he is the owner of eight undeclared apartments in Miami with a total value of $6.5 million, registered offshore from the British Virgin Islands. The first to write about this was FBK, which is recognized as an extremist and terrorist organization in Russia and is banned (the fund calls these decisions politically motivated and denies the accusations).
Ananskikh confirmed the fact of owning American apartments back in 2013: “I didn’t hide it, it’s just that no one needed it before” - and stated that he sold the property a long time ago. FBK then published documents about exactly to whom Ananskikh “sold” eight apartments: to the same offshore company for $100 apiece - he headed the Russian offshore companies himself. The deputy insisted that everything was legal.
This story is not included in Ruviki at all, but in Wikipedia it takes up more than a third of the article about the deputy.
3rd place: Vladimir Shamanov, United Russia
Colonel General, commanded troops in both Chechen wars, ex-commander of the Airborne Forces, ex-governor of the Ulyanovsk region. Twice elected to the Duma.
“Ruviki” preserved Shamanov’s combat biography, but cleaned out two episodes, because of which the general’s name did not leave the front pages of the media for years.
The first is the Budanov case. In 2000, Shamanov publicly supported Colonel Yuri Budanov, who was accused of murdering 18-year-old Chechen Elza Kungaeva: he called him one of his best commanders, and later came to Rostov-on-Don to defend him at trial. When Budanov was convicted, Shamanov asked the colonel to pardon.
The second episode is the story of how Shamanov stood up for his son-in-law’s business. In 2009, Novaya Gazeta (in the register of “foreign agents”) published a recording in which Shamanov orders two groups of airborne special forces to be sent to intercept an investigator of the Investigative Committee at the prosecutor’s office, who was going on a search to the Sporttek plant. The enterprise belonged to Shamanov’s son-in-law Alexey Khramushin, nicknamed Glyba, who was on the international wanted list. Shamanov acknowledged the authenticity of the conversation, but called the published transcript “selected passages,” “cleverly put together,” and what happened was “a provocation that was specially prepared.”
Neither Budanov, nor Kungaeva, nor the general’s son-in-law are mentioned in “Ruviki”.
4th place: Nikolay Brykin, United Russia
Deputy from the Tyumen region, retired tax police general, plenipotentiary representative of the State Duma in the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation.
Wikipedia retells the accusations against him made by an entrepreneur from Nizhnevartovsk, Konstantin Dyulgerov. He claimed in an interview with Novaya Gazeta that for years he had been paying “tribute” to people associated with Brykin, and when he refused protection services, a criminal case was opened against him. As Dyulgerov said, he had to give 49% of his company to Brykin’s son-in-law.
This is not the case in “Ruviki”: the reader learns only about the career, business, awards and bills of Brykin himself.
5th place: Andrei Lugovoi, LDPR
Former Kremlin security officer, since 2007 - in the State Duma. The only deputy whom the European Court of Human Rights recognized as the direct perpetrator of the murder.
According to the conclusion of the ECHR, it was Lugovoy and Dmitry Kovtun who poisoned former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko with polonium in London in November 2006. “Ruviki” didn’t erase it, but she edited it.
Wikipedia: “According to the verdict rendered by the ECHR in Strasbourg, he is the direct perpetrator of the poisoning.”
“Ruviki”: “In the verdict rendered by the ECHR in Strasbourg, he was named as the direct perpetrator.”
Lugovoy called the decision of the ECHR “politically biased” and “as idiotic as possible.”
The reasons for Western sanctions disappeared from the Ruviki article (only the dates and the British mention of the “Litvinenko case” remained), some of the deputy’s own statements—for example, that the British intelligence services tried to recruit him for the sake of dirt on Putin—and the price of his wife’s apartment.
As Open Media wrote, in 2019, Ksenia Lugovaya bought a 200-meter apartment for 51 million rubles, although the entire declared family income for the three previous years amounted to 29.6 million. The family explained the purchase with savings, a loan and Ksenia’s income from business. The apartment itself, like the rest of the declared real estate, is carefully listed by Ruviki.
6th place: Andrey Skoch, United Russia
The richest State Duma deputy, a long-time member of the Forbes list with a fortune of several billion dollars, has been in the Duma since 1999.
“Ruviki” left mentions of his wealth, the Madame Gu yacht, and even plagiarism in his dissertation, according to Dissernet. But the article on the Russian resource does not contain the 2012 Guardian report that Skoch is suspected of having connections with the Solntsevo organized crime group. Skoch himself admitted his acquaintance with Solntsevo leaders, but in a conversation with the Financial Times he called them “ordinary businessmen” and denied his participation in the organized crime group.
The mention of Skoch in the Panama Papers, a global leak of data on offshore companies published in 2016, was also removed. The US sanctions of 2018 disappeared: the US Treasury added Skoch to the list back in April 2018, directly writing in the explanation about his “long-standing ties with Russian organized crime groups.” In “Ruviki”, the MP’s sanction history begins only in 2022.
Also missing was a US federal court warrant dated August 2022 for the seizure of an Airbus aircraft for $90 million, which Skoch, according to the court, owned through shell companies.
7th place: Roman Lyabikhov, Communist Party of the Russian Federation
Communist developer from the Moscow region.
In May 2022, OCCRP journalists, based on leaked data on property owners in the UAE, found that Lyabikhov owns an apartment worth $430,000 in the Amwaj 4 complex in Dubai.
In January 2023, “Important Stories” (in the register of “foreign agents”) found four more apartments in Munich, none of which he declared. By that time, the deputy had already attracted the attention of the German prosecutor's office - these apartments were rented out for 3,500 euros per month. It is a crime for a sanctioned person to receive income from sources in the European Union. Probably in connection with this, the Munich prosecutor's office opened a criminal case, seizing three apartments and the account of Lyabikhov's wife, since rent could have been paid to it.
In "Ruviki" there is no Dubai, no Munich, no arrest. Lyabikhov himself never commented on all these publications.
8th place: Andrey Gurulev, United Russia
Lieutenant General and regular participant in shows on federal channels.
Ruvika administrators removed his most famous quotes. For example, after the start of a full-scale invasion, Gurulev proposed striking the Motherland monument in Kyiv. In October 2023, on the air of “Russia-1”, he proposed “if not isolating, then at least somehow destroying” that “rot” that does not support Putin and the war - and since we were talking about 20% of the population, it turned out that the deputy called for the destruction of approximately 29 million Russians, Novaya Gazeta calculated.
In January 2024, Gurulev developed an idea in his telegram channel: those who disagree with the war - “a tiny percentage of rot” - should be exiled to Kolyma. “I understand that this [destruction] is physically impossible: we have a moratorium on the death penalty,” the deputy admitted.
The reader of “Ruvika” will not see any of this. Instead of quotes from the deputy, there is a streamlined phrase: “Regularly speaks in the press and blogosphere with resonant statements on military-political issues.”
Gurulev himself is not going to the new Duma: in the May primaries of United Russia in Transbaikalia, he took an unfavorable third place, and he is not on the party list.
9th place: Zurab Makiev, United Russia
Deputy from North Ossetia in three convocations of the State Duma.
In 2021, the leader of a gang of killers, Aslan Gagiev, nicknamed Dzhako, stated that Makiev allegedly ordered the murder of former Deputy Prime Minister of North Ossetia Kazbek Pagiev in 2008. Makiev was not charged; he himself denied everything and called Gagiev’s words revenge. In 2024, the deputy’s uncle Murad Makiev, an official of Rostransnadzor, was placed under house arrest, whom investigators accused of receiving bribes from truck drivers for unhindered passage through the Urukh checkpoint.
In “Ruviki” there is neither a story with Gagiev’s testimony, nor a story about the arrest of a relative of a deputy.
10th place: Leonid Slutsky, LDPR
Leader of the LDPR and head of the Duma Committee on International Affairs.
In February 2018, journalists Farida Rustamova, Daria Zhuk and Ekaterina Kotrikadze (the latter considered a “foreign agent” by the Russian authorities) publicly accused Slutsky of harassment. Wikipedia has a section on this called “Accusations of Sexual Harassment.” In “Ruviki” the accusations are also described - but the section is called “Incident in the State Duma”, and this “incident” is told mainly “from the side of the defense” of the deputy.
The position of the “women’s club” of the State Duma, which stood up for its colleague, speaker Vyacheslav Volodin, who called the charges a political order, is given, the decision of the Duma ethics commission, which “found no violations,” as well as a detailed version of Slutsky from an interview with “Snob”: allegedly the campaign against him was “orchestrated,” and “the girls themselves became victims of a different kind of provocation.”
At the same time, if compared with Wikipedia, Slutsky’s biography has lost mention of his wife’s Bentley, purchased with a loan of 25 million rubles from the co-owner of the Moscow City Hall road contractor Mardakhai Yushvaev, and a hectare of land on Rublyovka from the FBK investigation.
Publicly, Slutsky always denied everything: “I am very flattered that my modest person was chosen for the projection of Harvey Weinstein (an American film producer convicted of sex crimes after numerous accusations of harassment and violence - BBC) in Russia, but the choice was not entirely successful.”
How else are biographies edited?
Ruvika administrators not only delete information about deputies, but also make minor changes to it, sometimes distorting the meaning of the proposal, sometimes embellishing it.
Sardana Avksentyeva (“New People”):
“Wikipedia” (original): “Instead of a portrait of Vladimir Putin, Avksentyeva hung a photograph in her office in which people celebrate the Yakut summer holiday Ysyakh.”
“Ruviki” (became): “In Avksentieva’s office she hung a photograph in which people celebrate the Yakut summer holiday Ysyakh.”
Anatoly Wasserman (“A Just Russia”):
Wikipedia “Later supported the Russian invasion of Ukraine and stated that it would go down in history as a four-day war.”
“Ruviki”: “Later he supported a special military operation on the territory of Ukraine.”
Vladimir Zhirinovsky (LDPR, died in 2022):
Wikipedia: “In the midst of a discussion with the governor of the Nizhny Novgorod region, Boris Nemtsov, Zhirinovsky doused him with orange juice and almost started a fight on air.”
“Ruviki”: “In the midst of a discussion with the governor of the Nizhny Novgorod region, Boris Nemtsov, Zhirinovsky, in response to provocations, doused him with orange juice and almost started a fight on air.”
Sergei Levchenko (Communist Party of the Russian Federation):
Wikipedia: “On December 13, 2019, the Irkutsk regional committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation released a statement saying that the “federal center” forced the governor to resign, and the resignation itself was called “a disgusting Kremlin special operation to dismiss Levchenko.”
Oleg Matveychev (United Russia):
“Ruviki”: “Matveychev is characterized by extravagant statements and stormy verbal escapades.”
Sergei Mironov (“A Just Russia”):
“Ruviki”: “Mironov actively supports a special military operation.”
Elena Yampolskaya (United Russia, since 2024 - Advisor to the President):
“Ruviki”: “The press noted that during her work at Izvestia, Yampolskaya repeatedly spoke out in support of Nikita Mikhalkov and published a number of positive reviews of his films.”
What is “Ruviki” and why you shouldn’t take her word for it
Russian authorities have long been suspicious of Wikipedia, the prototype of Ruvika and the world’s most popular encyclopedia, but after the invasion of Ukraine began, they switched to direct pressure. Roskomnadzor demands the removal of materials that contradict the official version of events, and for refusal to do so, the Wikimedia Foundation receives fines and warnings about possible blocking. But still, they did not completely block Wikipedia: it remains one of the few large independent sources available to Russian users without a VPN
