Bug with Crimea.

[followtheblackrabbit]

Crimea is part of Russia on your map. But this is not true. Crimea is Ukraine. I'm sure this is a bug, can you fix it?

[Maxszik]

A search brings this and this. I guess the creator is following the osm.org on the ground rule, but we’ll have to wait for him to reply.

[Monstrofil]

@nvkelso could you please explain your changes of Ukraine/Russia border? As far as I know, only several countries recognise Crimea as part of Russia, while others, including EU and US, not.

[nvkelso]

It's not a bug. Natural Earth follows the "on the ground" rule. Specifically (source):

Political features: Natural Earth’s shows the de facto administrative and sovereignty areas. We often show the disputed areas, too, so you can repurpose to suit your needs.

That said, we recognize this doesn't work for everyone (either for Crimea or a surprising number of border disputes around the world) so we are working on v5 which will offer pre-built admin-0 country themes and extra properties in the disputed and other themes that are optimized for different points of views (worldviews).

In the meantime you'd need to use either an earlier version of Natural Earth (eg in the v3 series) or use the disputed areas in v4 to modify the admin-0 country on your own.

[rshopa]

@nvkelso, there are no border disputes. Crimea is officially recognised as Ukrainian sovereign land, both by the United Nainions, the US and the most of the world. It is temporarily occupied, illegally annexed, but not disputed. Claiming it as "disputed territory" is a major misconception, and setting Crimea as Russian on your maps by default is merely unlawful.

Besides, the whole concept of "de facto"/"on the ground" is inpersuasive, as well, since such type of maps are impractical and used far less often than official political ones. Moreover, "de facto" would require changing a lot of the borders in the rest of the world: Cyprus, half-controlled by Turkey, Palestine - de-facto by Israel, parts of Afganistan, Iraq - by the US, Syria - divided by many military fractions and so on. There are many hypocritical claims on the internet with this "de facto" formula that completely ignores these issues and serve only one hypocrytical purpose - to claim that Crimea is de-facto Russian.

If some Russian or other rebel wants to create a separatistic map, it is he/she that should redefine the script for custom borders and not the reverse.

[gerasimvol]

There are no discussions about Crimea. Whole world recognizes it as Ukraine, as it always was. We don’t accept any special settings, admin-0 options or any other mess.

[anxolerd]

@nvkelso , if terrorists would occupy some territory and won't allow anyone else to that territory, would you support the terrorism by "accepting de-facto borders"?

You either follow officially recognized borders or support invaders and terrorists by "showing the disputed areas".

[nvkelso]

Here's the state of things in version 5 of Natural Earth which introduces optional "point-of-view" (POV) or "worldview" for administrative geographies. Version 5 will be released soon, and these changes are available as a branch and related PR in this Github repo.

Specifically, version 5 of Natural Earth:

1. Adds support for alternate points of view in admin-0 related themes with fclass_* properties (like fclass_iso).
   • The following country and international organizations worldviews are supported:
     • Argentina (ar), Bangladesh (bd), Brazil (br), China (cn), Egypt (eg), France (fr), Germany (de), Greece (gr), India (in), Indonesia (id), Israel (il), Italy (it), Japan (jp), Morocco (ma), Nepal (np), Netherlands (nl), Pakistan (pk), Palestine (ps), Poland (pl), Portugal (pt), Russia (ru), Saudi Arabia (sa), South Korea (ko), Spain (es), Sweden (se), Taiwan (tw), Turkey (tr), United Kingdom (gb), United States (us), Vietnam (vn), ISO (iso)
       • Fixes #301 (and this issue #391 which has a rich comment thread)
2. Provides easy alternate download of ne_10m_admin_0_countries themes preassembled for the 31 different viewpoints, like ne_10m_admin_0_countries_arg for Argentina.
   • Full list of countries:
     • Argentina (arg), Bangladesh (bdg), Brazil (bra), China (chn), Germany (deu), Egypt (egy), Spain (esp), France (fra), United Kingdom (gbr), Greece (grc), Indonesia (idn), India (ind), Israel (isl), Italy (ita), Japan (jpn), South Korea (kor), Morocco (mar), Nepal (nep), Netherlands (nld), Pakistan (pak), Poland (pol), Portugal (prt), Palestine (pse), Russia (rus), Saudi Arabia (sau), Sweden (swe), Turkey (tur), Taiwan (twn), Ukraine (ukr), United States of America (usa), and Vietname (vnm).
       • Fixes #301
3. Expands the name localization added in v4.1 to 25 languages (up from 21) so POV can be matched with localized labels.
   • Adds Farsi (fa) for Iran, Hebrew (he) for Israel, Ukrainian (uk) for Ukraine, and Urdu (ur) for Pakistan.
   • Localized names in the original 21 languages have also been updated.
   • Fixes #302

Now back to the situation between Ukraine and Russia:

(below) The default boundaries and country boundary remain defacto and don't change from version 4, here with English labels.

Note how the breakaway area of Donbas has a dashed line (while still being salmon colored for Ukraine even though it no longer controls the territory on the ground) and the two edge boundaries of Crimea are shown as disputed (while Crimea and Sevastopol are blue background as Russia administers those areas on the ground).

(below) However, version 5 introduces new attributes allowing one to match the Ukrainian labels with Ukraine point-of-view on the boundaries and country polygons.

Note how the Donbas breakaway area boundary line is no longer shown, and landward Crimea boundary is shown as an admin-1 line, and the exterior Crimea boundary is shown as a country boundary (with Crimea and Sevastopol are salmon background as Ukraine claims those areas).

(below) Same for Russian POV here with Russian labels.

Note Donbas as unspoken and the landward Crimea boundary as the solid black country boundary line (with Crimea and Sevastopol as blue background as Russia claims and administers those areas on the ground).

Again, with the disputed polygons:

(below) Showing English labels, we see two disputed areas for Crimea and Donbas in the underlying data:

There is recognition that the situation remains complicated. But this new version provides a data-driven way to match local expectations all while preserving Natural Earth's commitment to showing the defacto state of the world. That's not without controversy, but should be more useful to more people than the current state in version 4.

[rshopa]

@nvkelso

The default boundaries and country boundary remain defacto and don't change from version 4, here with English labels.

I strongly disagree and shall report wherever possible this issue, as the developers ostensibly violate the International Law. UN statement, all Western countries, most of the rest of the world clearly stated that they support the integrity of Ukraine and recognise its borders as of the beginning of 2014. Crimean Peninsula is not even disputed under Ukrainian law, it is "temporarily occupied".

One more, I stress that the so-called "de-facto" status, even if introduced, is highly unpractical since it's difficult to achieve consistency. For instance, it does not depict other territories, occupied and controlled by Russia - Transnistria, occupied Donbass, DE-FACTO even Belarus (the first picture). I suspect the same is about Tskhinvali and Abkhazia (not painted in "russian"). Moreover, the ongoing conflicts (such as between Azerbaijan and Armenia) might change borderlines on a daily basis, rendering such map obscured.

The only logical reason this so-called "de-facto" version might exist is that the developers did not act in good faitn and their goal was ONLY to justify the Crimean occupation. Therefore, I consider you and the Natural Earth team as those who support terrorist acts, invasion and mass-murder made by Russian Federation and question the Ukrainian sovereignty, by introducing this so-called "de-facto" formula. I also encourage the rest of the people who had left the post here to make similar statements.

The "russian" version should not exist in the first place as it justifies the war crimes. I considered it the same as if, e.g. you added the ISIS or Taliban version of the map.

[Monstrofil]

I'm a bit confused with your "defacto" usage... why Crimea is so special in this region? Why is Transnistria marked as Moldova teritory and Donbass is marked as part of Ukraine in default worldview, but Crimea is not?

I'm totally accepting existence of multiple worldviews (e.g. Russian one where Crimea would me marked as "Республика Крым") just because some countries have their own laws that don't match most of the other world. But global DEFAULT view must match most (if not all) international laws and views. Making Crimea as part of Russia by default makes much more people around the world to change their maps manually.

[anxolerd]

@nvkelso

As Ukrainian citizen I am deeply offended with you de-facto supporting terrorism by recognizing and ACCEPTING Crimea occupation with Russia. I totally agree with @rshopa, that

The "russian" version should not exist in the first place as it justifies the war crimes. I considered it the same as if, e.g. you added the ISIS or Taliban version of the map.

It's not just me being offended. By doing the thing, you are de-facto (I see, you love this word to justify the crimes and insults) telling the whole nation of Ukrainians: "hey you stupid, take this PoV feature to fullfill your fantasies about Crimea, as it will never be yours". This is definitely unacceptable.

[pathexplorer]

Crimea is Ukraine! The whole world adheres to this point of view!

[lietto]

People use maps to know about the world and countries more. And with this "de-facto" and POV usage you mislead this people with wrong info. We have UN and different international laws and we should use them to show the real borders of the countries. Of course you should show additional info about occupied and disputed areas but borders should be "de jure".

[nvkelso]

The PR https://github.com/nvkelso/natural-earth-vector/pull/446 described in https://github.com/nvkelso/natural-earth-vector/issues/391#issuecomment-890772203 has been merged. Closing this issue.

[FormerlyChucks]

hi carp

[n0rdlicht]

Quite disappointing and upsetting to see a popular and trusted global dataset, among other things, representing politics in any other way than agreed by the UN. While complicated for sure, I'm not able to fathom how this can be. @nvkelso: please simply state that you are rejecting the UN as legitimate and we can move on and establish a new dataset. While the UN has no doubt failed in many regards it still embodies the hope and dream of humans cooperating peacefully through diplomacy rather than force and whoever is more powerful. You and everyone arguing for the "on-the-ground-rule" are unfortunately choosing the latter without even recognising as pointed out above 😔 And no, adding a way to represent different POVs is not a solution, other than at a minimum discarding the rule of law in a fundamental way. Extremely disappointing and sad.

FYI how I got to this thread today: simply browsing the wonderful maplibre landing page, using a demo tileset based on this one and being very disturbed by Crimea showing up as Russian territory, no indication of any sorts right next to a logo modified to show support for Ukraine.

[SeriyBg]

Today, after the world discovered the russian atrocities, the war crimes, and the unprovoked war unleashed by russia, the author is still disgracefully chosen to use an excuse for justifying the illegal annexation of Crimea! This goes against international law, against the UN statements, and supports terrorism!

[webcaptcha]

Can we apply to court and ban @nvkelso on the GitHub because he is violating US laws.

[rshopa]

@webcaptcha agree: probably only a federal lawsuit can make this crime be resolved.

[OrchidSoleil]

Natural Earth team's stance on the issue of occupied Crimea showing as a Russian territory by default is appalling. Why don't you mark Crimea a Ukrainian territory by default and force Russia to apply its crooked 'worldview' is beyond me. Russia is a state sponsor of terrorism after all. Unless Russia bribes you, of course. Your 'de facto/de jure' argument stands no ground, as people already pointed out. By supporting this version of the map you support atrocities and deportations that Russians commit in Crimea and in Ukraine since 2014. I'll continue raising this issue wherever possible.

[rshopa]

@OrchidSoleil I also noticed @nvkelso closes almost every issue here reporting the "bug with Crimea", without any explanation and consensus reached. I suspect he's preventing the fact of consciously denying the sovereignty of Ukraine by himself and the Natural Earth go viral.

I also believe it can no longer be considered a conventional tech issue which can be resolved in traditional way, since a felony of such scale during the genocidal war requires a legal consequences. This cannot be left out unpunished even if GitHub intervenes directly (it did not).

[OrchidSoleil]

@rshopa i certainly agree with you that something's fishy going on here. They just refer us to Natural Earth's statement on 'disputed territory', in which they also take russia's side by default and force Ukraine and the rest of the world to apply 'POV', as they call it, when in fact, it's russia's 'POV' doesn't comply with the rest of the world. And it is disturbing. 'POV' of aggressor is always victim blaming, the same way russia blames Ukraine for russian invasion. Illegal occupation and deportation is not a worldview, I'm sorry, it is an international crime. But I've found out yesterday, that this issue of assigning specifically Crimea to russia on maps, declaring it 'de facto' russian, goes even deeper. Along with Natural Earth, another major map source, OpenStreetMap Foundation, also assigns Crimea to russia with exactly the same 'explanation'. Here it gets even worse. Two days ago I've seen one of such maps in Washington Post, used by Institute for the Study of War, alas unknowingly, where you can clearly see the border between Ukraine and Crimea.