Google denies revealing Russian military objects on its maps

Google LLC denied the fact of revealing secret Russian military and strategic sites on Google Maps. According to The Verge, the company claims they didn’t make any changes to the available imagery.

On April 18, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence news agency ArmyInform notified that since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, an online mapping tool Google Maps stopped censoring secret bases of the Russian Armed Forces. In particular, an Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier, a nuclear ammunition base near Murmansk, a Russian SU-57 fighter jet in a flight test centre, as well as an intercontinental ballistic missile launch site.

The agency stressed that earlier these locations were depicted in lower definition, but now they can be zoomed in up to 50 cm/pixel resolution. Same was also posted on @ArmedForcesUkr Twitter — an unofficial account supporting the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The publication received up to 2.5K retweets and was widely cited in the media.

But Google denies the information. ‘We haven’t made any blurring changes to our satellite imagery in Russia’, stated Genevieve Park, Google spokesperson. She also added that the imagery in circulation has been available long before the conflict in Ukraine began.

After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Google has paused the ad sales in Russia, restrained the access to Google Pay for Russian users and banned Russian state media account to run ads on YouTube.