(Bloomberg) — 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.
“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.
To contact the reporter on this story: Ian King in San Francisco at [email protected]
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jillian Ward at [email protected], Andrew Pollack, Alistair Barr
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