When Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula of Ukraine in 2014, it created ongoing issues of many sorts, and now one of them involves Google’s mapping software. And the Russian government is threatening Google
Russia claims to have absorbed the peninsula into Russia and is certainly running it, while the U.N. and most countries continue to regard it as legally part of Ukraine—and so does Ukraine.
As part of its program of renaming places and buildings to remove the remains of Soviet-era personalities and institutions, it has issued new names for towns in Crimea, and Google Maps followed by putting the changes in its software.
Russia’s communications minister, Nikolai Nikiforov told the press that “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,” and said Google was “out of its mind.”
Apparently the threat was taken seriously: Google reversed course and restored the names preferred by Russia.
