Russia’s internet regulator on Monday added the Russian-language version of Wikipedia to its list of blocked sites. The escalation in Moscow’s online censorship campaign is likely to bring the issue to the attention of the broader public which has so far ignored it.

Roskomnadzor, the regulator, had warned that it would block the Russian Wikipedia unless the website took down an article on the history and production of Charas, a form of hashish. It pointed to a June court decision which declared the publication in Russia of instructions for hashish preparation illegal.

The Russian-language service sought at the weekend to comply technically with the order by moving the entry to a web archive to which searches automatically redirect. But Roskomnadzor said this did not solve the problem because the banned article remained accessible.