Google Maps exposes Russia secret military & strategic facilities

As Russia keeps advancing in its quest against Ukraine the sanctions against Putin’s administration keep being enforced. Russia is quickly becoming an isolated country with most of the world’s biggest economies applying sanctions against the country. These sanctions are affecting the lives of Russians in many aspects from economic to technological fronts. Many occidental apps have been leaving the country or showing their discontent with the ongoing conflict. However, this has not been enough to change Putin’s mind.

Google is slowly advancing against Russia by removing its services in a gradual form. However, the US-based company has not decided yet to completely leave the country. Still, it keeps advancing with small sanctions against Russia. Therefore, Google Maps has now exposed Russia’s secret military and strategic facilities. It’s just a matter of time until Russia decides to strike Google with a ban.

Secret locations in Russia are no longer secret

According to Osint UK on Twitter, the Google Maps service has just stopped hiding Russia’s secret military and strategic facilities. Now, it’s possible for anyone in public to view these important key Russian locations. It has completely open-sourced all secret Russian installations including ICBMs, command posts, and more with a good resolution of 0.5 m per pixel. The account shared a couple of images showing some military equipment including what seems to be a bunch of submarines. Interestingly, even the Twitter account that represents the Ukrainian Armed Forces has shared these images forward citing the very same 0.5m per pixel resolution.

As per reports, these images were blurred before, but now are perfect for view with just a few clicks. Some of these images include the Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier, a nuclear weapons store near Murmansk, Submarines in the Far East Peninsula of Kamchatka, and a Military Airbase in the Western City of Kursk. It’s just 150 kilometers away from the Russian – Ukraine border, one of the key locations for this conflict.

A local and indepented media outlet from Moscow cites the ongoing strains between Russia and Google, a US-based company. To understand the situation, Google no longer offers advertisements and ads-monetization for Russian users. It was a direct move against the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine. After that move, Russian officials, have been accusing Google’s YouTube of stirring an “information war”. This is to counterattack YouTube’s decision of blocking Russian state media from the platform.

Kremlin will certainly have a hard time digesting this. However, we expect it to answer soon. More recently, Russian developers took a big hit with Github’s decision of banning their accounts.