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Google assures Russian lawmakers Crimea will be shown on maps correctly

Earlier, the Committee on Security and Fighting Corruption launched checks into incorrect display of Crimea on Google’s maps

MOSCOW, February 7. /TASS/. US Internet company Google has vowed that the situation with incorrect display of the Russian region of Crimea on its maps will be settled soon, Chairman of the Committee on Security and Fighting Corruption Vasily Piskarev told reporters on Thursday after a meeting with Marina Zhunich, a government relations director for Google Russia.

Earlier, the committee launched checks into incorrect display of Crimea on Google’s maps. In particular, requests to check this information were sent to Russia’s Prosecutor-General Yuri Chaika and telecom watchdog’s chief Alexander Zharov.

"Marina Zhunich has assured that this has nothing to do with politics. This is only a continuing technical failure. She said this is a priority of her work today and soon this will be corrected on Google’s maps and other products of the company," Piskarev said.

The committee’s chairman noted that the lawmakers expect that Google would deal with the technical failure within a month and agreed on a meeting with the company’s representatives. "We will take harsher measures of response," Piskarev said, without detailing particular steps in case this technical failure was not corrected. "Now we believe that there is no political motive here. Now we think that this is a technical failure and a defect."

On January 24, Speaker of the Russian State Duma (lower house) Vyacheslav Volodin handed down instructions to summon a Google representative to the parliament after a lawmaker had said that Crimea was featured on Google maps not as part of Russia. Later, Chairman of the State Duma Information Policy Committee Leonid Levin said that a company representative had contacted him to confirm that when accessing Google maps from Russia, Crimea was displayed as a Russian region. The next day Google admitted that Crimea’s territorial status may not be always displayed correctly on its maps for some users in Russia but reiterated that its local version complies with Russia’s laws. The company pledged to do its best to show data correctly.