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“It is unclear who would control the activities of this organisation,” the head of Russian Wikipedia, Vladimir Medeiko, complained to the RIA Novosti news agency.

“There is a great risk of censorship appearing on the Russian Internet.”

In a storm of comment, Russia’s main Internet companies including Yandex and Mail.ru Group backed Wikipedia’s objections to the bill.

The bill comes as part of an apparent trend to use the pliant Duma lower house dominated by the ruling United Russia party to rubberstamp laws that can be used against the opposition.

It has recently pushed through legislation ramping up fines for protesters and stigmatising internationally-funded NGOs as “foreign agents”.

Protest leader Alexei Navalny slammed the bill on his popular blog saying it would “move the Internet in the direction of the Zombie Box,” a slang term for Kremlin-controlled television.

The bill cites websites carrying child pornography, promoting drug use and encouraging children to commit suicide, saying the decision to blacklist these would be taken by an unnamed federal agency.

It said that sites would also be blacklisted under vague extremism laws, which can be enforced by the ruling of a single district court.

Under the bill, an entire site could be blacklisted over the content of one page.

The bill was proposed by the Duma’s family, women and children committee, an all-party group.

It has already prompted high-level opposition.