National Geographic will mark Crimea as part of Russia, not Ukraine, on maps as soon as the Russian parliament votes to annex the region, according to U.S. News.
On Tuesday, cartographers at National Geographic met to discuss the status of Ukraine. For now, the organization has marked it as a special area and a territory of Ukraine.
“We map de facto, in other words we map the world as it is, not as people would like it to be,” Juan José Valdés, geographer and director of editorial and research for National Geographic Maps, told U.S. News. “As you can only surmise, sometimes our maps are not received in a positive light by some individuals who want to see the world in a different light.”
Rand McNally, a company that makes educational maps, will not mark Crimea as part of Ukraine, according to U.S. News. The company follows the U.S. State Department, which declared Crimea’s vote to secede invalid.
Google Maps on Wednesday marked that Crimea was part of Ukraine, but the region was surrounded by a red dashed line.
Wikipedia still designates Crimea as part of Ukraine, but briefly showed the region as part of Russia on Tuesday morning, according to U.S. News.
The Associated Press also announced on Wednesday that the wire’s reporters will change the datelines they append to reporting from the country, as “Ukraine no longer controls Crimea, and AP datelines should reflect the facts on the ground.”
The service will now use city name and “Crimea” as a dateline, instead of “Ukraine.”
