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Apple Maps gives Crimea to Russia, gets angry Ukrainian reaction

Ian King (Bloomberg)
Thu, November 28, 2019 Published on Nov. 28, 2019 Published on 2019-11-28T10:24:35+07:00

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Prystaiko and the Ukrainian embassy in Washington asserted in a tweet directed at Apple that the area is under Russian occupation and its sovereignty hasn’t changed. Prystaiko and the Ukrainian embassy in Washington asserted in a tweet directed at Apple that the area is under Russian occupation and its sovereignty hasn’t changed. (Shutterstock/Den Rozhnovsky)

Ukraine’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Vadym Prystaiko accused Apple Inc. of insensitivity in having some versions of its Maps application depict the Crimean peninsula as being part of Russia.

Prystaiko and the Ukrainian embassy in Washington asserted in a tweet directed at Apple that the area is under Russian occupation and its sovereignty hasn’t changed. The minister tried to present the situation in terms of how Apple might react if in a parallel situation.

Read also: Russia dismisses US Crimea declaration

“Imagine you’re crying out that your design & ideas, years of work & piece of your heart are stolen by your worst enemy but then smb ignorant doesn’t give a damn about your pain,” he tweeted. “That’s how it feels when you call #Crimea a (Russian flag) land.”

Apple didn’t respond to a request for comment. The BBC and other news organizations earlier reported that Crimea, a peninsula in the Black Sea that was annexed by Russia in 2014, was shown as being part of Russia on Russian versions of the Apple map software used on the iPhone and iPad.

The more widely used Google Maps from Alphabet Inc.’s Google, uses a dotted line to show the boundary between Ukraine and Crimea to its south, more tentatively placing the latter area inside Russia, in versions seen from the U.S. Google Maps uses dotted lines when national boundaries are unclear or disputed.

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