Acceding to Russia’s demand, US-based tech giant Apple has caved on to show the controversial annexed Crimean peninsula as part of the Russian territory on its location based apps.
The annexed region, which has a Russian-speaking majority, will now be visible in Russian territory on Apple Maps and Weather Apps, when viewed from Russia.
“World leaders decried the move, saying that Russia had deliberately helped instigate the crisis there in order to take advantage of it, and violated Ukraine’s sovereignty with its military presence,” TechCrunch reported on Thursday.
“While the controversy surrounding these events are ongoing, companies like Apple and Google don’t have the luxury of waiting for history’s judgment to do things like update their maps,” the report added.
The peninsula on the north side of the Black Sea was brought under the Russian control in March 2014 during political unrest there concerning Crimea’s status within Ukraine.
According to a report in BBC, the State Duma, the Russian parliament’s lower house, said in a statement: “Crimea and Sevastopol now appear on Apple devices as Russian territory.”
Apple has been in conversation with Russian officials for months over what the State Duma described as “inaccuracy” in the way Crimea was labelled, the BBC report added.
Search engine giant Google, in 2014, agreed to portray Crimea as part of Russia for users inside Russia. And now, users outside Russia will see Crimea’s capital Simferopol without an accompanying country at all, according to Forbes.
However, when seen from the US, both Apple and Google reportedly appear to take a neutral stance and the Crimean peninsula appears as neither Russian nor Ukrainian on both the firm’s maps.
(With input from agencies)