Google Maps images showing the locations of Ukrainian weapons systems were in fact over a year old and came from publicly available service, Google told European Pravda on Nov. 5.
The comments came in response to reports from Andrii Kovalenko, the head of the counter-disinformation department at Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council, that the tech giant's online map service revealed the locations of Ukrainian weapons systems in recently updated images.
"These satellite images were taken more than a year ago and come from publicly available sources — we deliberately do not publish the latest images of war zones," Google's press service said in a comment to European Pravda.
"We take such requests very seriously and are in constant communication with Ukrainian officials."
Kovalenko said on Nov. 3 that images of Ukrainian defense infrastructure were visible on Google Maps and that Russian forces were "actively dispersing" the images. According to Kovalenko, Google representatives contacted Ukraine to resolve the issue after public outcry over the images.
"In the future, we will also talk about how to solve any (similar) problems quickly," Kovalenko said.
Francis Farrell
