The Truth Wins is fighting for press freedom in Russia by turning the lottery numbers from Stoloto “6 out of 36” into an access code for independent journalism.

All lotteries in Russia are state-owned and are organized by the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Sports of the Russian Federation. The lottery business in Russia is a multimillion dollar industry and plays an important role in funding the regime.

The extent to which control over access to information in social networks and online media has become a battleground in modern-day conflicts is becoming particularly evident in Russia’s war against Ukraine. With draconian laws, website-blocking, internet cuts and leading news outlets throttled out of existence, the pressure on independent media has grown steadily in the past ten years. As the major TV channels continue to inundate viewers with propaganda, the climate has become very oppressive for those who question the new patriotic and neo-conservative discourse. Vague and discriminatory laws have been used to imprison journalists and bloggers. The Kremlin seems determined to control the internet, a goal referred to as the “sovereign internet”. Journalists are being branded as “foreign agents,” a defamatory label already applied to some media outlets and leading media defense NGOs. Crimea, which was annexed in 2014, and Chechnya have meanwhile become “black holes” from which little news and information emerges. Murders and physical attacks against journalists continue to go unpunished and journalists are being arrested on a trumped-up charges.