Google on July 28 changed the names of towns, villages and districts in Russian-occupied Crimea on its Google Maps mapping service in accordance with Ukraine’s decommunization law.
But on July 29, after an outcry from Russian officials, it changed them right back again.
The day before, Google had renamed 75 settlements and five districts on its maps of the Russian-annexed Ukrainian territory in line with a list of names approved by Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada on May 12.
Most of the renamed settlements acquired Crimean-Tatar names. The town of Krasnoperekopsk was renamed as Yany Kapu, and the district center towns of Krasnohvardiyske and Kirovske were renamed as Kurman and Isliam-Terek respectively.
Although Russian users see Crimea on Google Maps as part of Russia and Ukrainians see the peninsula as Ukrainian, the newly introduced names were displayed to all internet users around the world, including those in Ukraine, Russia and Crimea.
But then the Russian authorities started to raise a fuss.
Russian Minister of Communications Nikolay Nikiforov late on July 28 warned the U.S. tech giant it might have problems doing business in Russia.
“If Google so casually ignores Russian legislation on names of settlements, it will be very difficult for the company to conduct business on Russian territory,” Russian News Agency TASS quoted Nikiforov as saying.
“I think it’s a short-sighted policy,” Nikiforov said.
Sergey Aksyonov, who was appointed by Russian Federation as Crimea’s prime minister after Moscow seized the Ukrainian territory, also questioned Google’s decision to make the changes.
“It is hard to say why the company (Google) is indulging Kyiv’s Russophobic hysteria,” Aksyonov wrote on his Facebook page on July 28. “But that’s not the point. The thing is such decisions made by a foreign state (Ukraine) have nothing to do with Crimean reality and will never be implemented.”
Shortly after, Google reversed all of the name changes. However, it promised to create two different versions of Google maps, one for Russia and one for Ukraine.
“We are actively working on giving (localities) their old names in the Russian version of Google Maps,” a Google spokesman told the Russian financial daily RBK.
Representatives of Google in Ukraine told the Kyiv Post they could not comment on the issue at the moment.
Most countries around the world have condemned Russia’s annexation of Crimea as illegal. Ukraine still considers Crimea to be part of its territory.
The Ukrainian parliament drafted decommunization laws in 2002, 2005, 2009, 2011 and 2013. However, the formal decommunization process started in Ukraine only in April 2015. The approved laws, among other acts, outlawed communist-related symbols, renamed streets and towns, and ordered the removal of monuments to communists.
Ukraine used to have 5,500 monuments to Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin in 1991, while this had fallen to 1,300 by December 2015. The process of removing Lenin statues accelerated after the 2013-2014 Euromaidan revolution.
The Ukrainian territory of Crimea was annexed by the Russian Federation on March 18, 2014. Since then, the peninsula has been administered as the de facto Crimean Federal District, constituting two Russian federal subjects — the Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol.
The annexation was preceded by a military intervention by Russia in Crimea, which took place in the aftermath of the Euromaidan Revolution and wider unrest across southern and eastern Ukraine.
International organizations have declared the occupation and annexation as illegal, and condemned Moscow’s actions.
On July 28, Russian president Vladimir Putin signed decree on stripping Crimea of its special status and including the territory in Russia’s Southern Federal District.
Kyiv
Post staff writer Denys Krasnikov can be reached at [email protected]. The Kyiv Post’s IT coverage is sponsored by Beetroot, Ciklum, Steltec Capital, 1World Online and SoftServe. The content is independent of the donors.
