The Ukraine Presidential Election Map

A comedian has been voted the President of Ukraine. Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who plays the role of the president on a popular television comedy, is now the actual President of Ukraine, after cruising to victory in yesterday's presidential election in Ukraine.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy received an astonishing 73.2% of the vote in the election. The incumbent, Petro Poroshenko, received just 24.5% of the national vote. Little is known of how Zelenskiy intends to preside over Ukraine. His election campaign contained almost no information about his policies or his plans for office. Apart from a vague promise to clean-up politics and end the power of the oligarchs his campaign consisted of viral videos and jokes. Some already doubt his promise to clean-up politics, with rumors of close ties between Zelenskiy, Zelenskiy's campaign team, and the oligarch Ihor Kolomoyskyi.

You can view how Ukraine voted on Dekoder's Presidential Elections in Ukraine 2019 interactive map. The map was initially released following the first round of the Ukraine Presidential Election. It has now been updated to include the results of yesterday's second round of voting between Zelenskiy and Poroshenko. As can be seen from the map Zelenskiy was the popular choice in nearly the whole country.


The Dekoder interactive map allows you to filter the results by candidate. If we show just the areas where Poroshenko received more of the votes it is noticeable that Poroshenko remained popular in only the area around the city of Lviv (the Lviv Oblast) in the west of Ukraine. The map includes an option to also filter the results shown by the gap between the two candidates. In fact, if you adjust the size of this filter, you can see that Zelenskiy's winning margin generally gets larger the further east you move.

Ukraine Election Map

A comedian who plays the president of Ukraine on television is the favorite to become the next real president of Ukraine. With just over 80% of the votes counted in yesterday's Ukraine election the comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy is in the lead with over 30% of the votes. He has almost twice the percentage of votes as the current president Petro Poroshenko.

The Presidential Elections in Ukraine 2019 map shows the election results in each voting district in Ukraine. Polling stations are shown on the map colored by the presidential candidate who won the most votes in that district. Volodymyr Zelenskiy seems to have had much more appeal across the whole country than the current president, except in the north-west where Petro Poroshenko seems to have won most of the districts. You can click on individual polling booths on the map to view the turnout percentage and the total number of votes cast. You can also see the percentage of the votes cast in the district for each of the presidential candidates.

It looks like none of the candidates will get an overall majority after all the votes are counted. This means that a second round of voting will take place on 21 April. This will be a straight race between the two candidates with the most votes in yesterday's election. This means that former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko (currently in third place) will probably not be on the ballot.

Mapping Ukraine's Displaced People

Since Russia invaded the Crimean region of Ukraine in 2014 more than one million people have been forced from their homes. The continuing fighting in eastern Ukraine and the impact of the conflict on people's livelihoods has forced hundreds of thousands of people to leave their homes and move elsewhere in Ukraine.

Reach has released an interactive map which visualizes the geography and effect of internally displaced people in Ukraine. REACH is a non-profit organization which helps aid agencies by providing assessments and mapping services in countries which are in crisis. For its Ukraine: Internally Displaced People map it used displacement data provided by the Ministry of Social Policy of Ukraine. This data only records internally displaced people who have registered to receive benefits. It doesn't show people who have moved abroad or the internally displaced who have not registered for benefits.

The map provides a choropleth view of the number of internally displaced people in each Ukrainian district. If you select a district on the map you can view the total number of displaced people since 2014, while a graph in the map sidebar shows the number of internally displaced people over time. If you select the 'Proportion of IDP's' you can view a choropleth view which has been normalized to show the number of people displaced as a percentage of the region's population.

Discover Ukraine

The regions of Ukraine have partnered with Google to release a series of tourist maps which highlight and promote the tourist attractions available in each of the country's different regions. The new custom designed maps have been created to attract and help visitors discover the wonders of Ukraine and to provide visitors with all the tools they need to plan their trips around the country.

So far maps for two regions, Kyiv and Sumy, have been released. You can visit these individual regional maps at Discover Kyiv and Discover Sumy. Other regions maps will be available soon, but you can still find out what the rest of Ukraine has to offer at Discover Ukraine.

Each of the region maps uses a custom designed Google Map, interactive Street View tours, information about important locations and tools to help you plan your trip to the region. If you select one of the building icons on the map you can view detailed information about the chosen point of interest, views photos of the building and (where available) take a virtual tour using Google Street View.

Even if you have no plans to visit Ukraine these new individually designed maps are a great way to learn about the different regions of Ukraine and about each region's most historical buildings and places of interest.

AI Satellites Spying on Earth

Over the last few years there have been some great developments in computer vision recognition. One application for these machine learning vision recognition algorithms has been to look for patterns in satellite images of the Earth.

For example, Onformative has developed an algorithm, called GoogleFaces, that scans satellite imagery looking for patterns that we might recognize as resembling human faces. Terrapattern has also used deep learning machine vision techniques. In their case to find locations which look very similar from the air (share common geographical or urban patterns). Google's Land Lines also demonstrates how machine learning can detect and recognize patterns in abstract imagery. Land Lines allows you to explore satellite imagery through finger or mouse gestures. Draw a line or pattern and Land Lines will find satellite imagery which contains the same shape.

While these applications are great fun to play with they are only demonstrations of the potential use of machine pattern recognition when applied to satellite imagery. The technology actually has some very serious potential real-world applications. For example Texty has trained a computer model to search satellite imagery for evidence of illegal amber mining.

Over recent years in the Ukraine thousands of hectares of land have been stripped in order to mine amber. In fact around 50,000 Ukrainians are now involved in illegal amber mining. Texty created and implemented a machine algorithm that was able to analyze hundreds of thousands of satellite images to identify the locations of illegal amber mines in Ukraine.

You can explore some of the results of this analysis in Земляна проказа, a story map about Ukraine's illegal amber mines. The story map includes a number of satellite images of illegal mining, all of which were found by Texty's algorithm. If you click on these images the web page cleverly turns into a map of the illegal mining location. Click on the 'x' and the map closes and returns you to the story map.

How to Rob a Country

The problems with having an oligarch as a president is that they will steal as much money as they can while they are in power. The longer they remain in power the better they become at laundering their stolen money. This is particularly true of those oligarchs who are supported by Russia.

Take Viktor Yanukovich for example. As president of Ukraine from 2010-2014 he managed to steal billions of dollars using a global money laundering network. Al Jazeera has used documents recovered after the Ukrainian revolution to map how Victor Yanukovich was able to move his stolen money around the world.

The Oligarchs is an interactive story map which tracks the movements of the stolen money through shell companies in offshore tax havens and other money-laundering hotspots around the world, such as the UK. As you progress through the story map you can follow the trail of the money as it is laundered clean by being passed from bank to bank and tax haven to tax haven. None of the banks used, including those in the United States, flagged the money or its movements as suspicious.

Al Jazeera suggests that the money stolen from Ukraine by Victor Yanukovich is now being used to fuel dissent in Ukraine.

The Ukrainian Intercity Rail Map

Travel By Rail is an interactive map and data visualization tool of intercity rail journeys in Ukraine. The map allows you to explore the number of outgoing and incoming intercity train journeys for towns and cities across the Ukraine (2014-2015).

The map provides a number of tools which allow you to explore the data by location and date range.

You can select individual cities on the map to show the intercity rail journeys taken to and from that city. You can also use the graph to select to view only those train journeys taken within a specified date range (either for all cities or for selected individual cities). It is also possible to view only internal train journeys in Ukraine, or journeys between Ukraine and Belarus or Russia, or both internal journeys and journeys taken to and from Belarus & Russia.

If you click on the button beneath the interactive graph you can view the numbers of journeys taken between the different cities within the selected date range.

Street View in Turkey, Ukraine & Macedonia

Turkey, Ukraine and the Republic of Macedonia now have Street View imagery on Google Maps.


All three countries seem to have pretty extensive Street View coverage. Although in Ukraine, perhaps for obvious reasons, the Crimean peninsula doesn't have any Street View imagery.

The virtual tourist on Google Maps can now view the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. In Ukraine you can visit the Golden Gates and the Holy Dormition Cathedral. In the Republic of Macedonia you can visit the Stone Bridge in Skopje.

Mapping Infrastructure Damage in Ukraine

The United Nations Development Programme and the Ukrainian NGO Social Boost have collaborated to release a mobile application which allows residents in Donetsk and Lugansk to map damage to buildings.

Using the application residents in in the war-torn region of East Ukraine can upload information and photos of buildings which have been damaged in the fighting. The information can then be used by aid agencies to help restore critical infrastructure in the area.

Data uploaded using the app appears on the Redonbass interactive map. The Redonbass map includes links to download the app from the App Store or Google Play.

Flight MH17 - The Hunt for the Truth

Correct!v has released an in-depth investigation into the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over Eastern Ukraine on July 17th 2014. Flight MH17 - Searching for the Truth provides detailed evidence suggesting that MH17 was downed by a ground-launched BUK missile which was fired by a unit of the 53rd Russian Air Defense Brigade.

The report includes eye-witness accounts from the missile launch site, rebuttals of Russian counter-claims and interviews with Ukrainian separatists. However while Correct!v clearly blames Russia for bringing down flight MH17 they also say that the Ukrainian government are not entirely blameless. They claim that the government were deliberately using civilian flights as cover for air attacks on Russian tanks.

The report includes an animated map showing air traffic over the site of the downed MH17 on July 17th. The map also includes flight data for July 18th showing the immediate reduction in flight traffic over the area as airlines realized that these flight paths were no longer safe.

Google Maps Russia's Attacks on Ukraine

The Cross-Border Artillery Attacks map identifies evidence of Russian attacks on Ukraine using the latest Google Maps satellite imagery.

To create the map Google Map satellite images of eastern Ukraine taken in August and September of this year were analysed for evidence of artillery craters. The Russian artillery attacks were identified from the evidence of large (several metres in diameter) artillery craters.

The map also shows the direction of the trajectory for each of the artillery attacks using artillery crater analysis. Two Russian artillery attacks confirmed by USA Government satellite images are also included on the map.

The map certainly seems to have compelling evidence that many of the identified artillery craters are the result of cross-border artillery fire from across the Russian border. More information about the map and the analysis techniques used to identify the artillery craters and the trajectories of the attacks can be found on the Map Investigations blog.

Mapping the Crisis in Ukraine

Liveuamap is a Google Map reporting incidents from the crisis in Ukraine. The map is a nonprofit, volunteer run project with a mission to inform the world about the on-going conflict in Ukraine.

The latest events in the country are plotted on the map using categorized map markers and are also listed in a map side-panel. The blue map markers relate to Ukrainian government actions and the red markers show the actions of the pro-Russian rebels.

The map includes a date picker so that you can select to view reported incidents from any date during the conflict. It also includes dynamic URL's so that you directly link to any incident reported on the map.

Tracking Flight 17

I've seen a number of impressive images maps showing the location where Malaysia Airlines flight M17 was shot down over Ukraine. Now the Wall Street Journal has released the first decent interactive map that I've seen.

Tracking Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 shows the flight path of flight 17 on July 17th, the date of the crash. The map also allows you to view flight paths of flight 17 in the months preceding the crash and the paths taken since the plane was fatally shot down.

The map shows that Flight M17 was flying within the usual flight path. You can also see how Flight 17 since the crash is making a wide berth of Ukrainian air space.

The 1885 Map of Crimea

The Crimean War (1853-56) between the Russians on one side and the British, French, and Ottoman Turkish on the other, was fought mainly on the Crimean peninsular. In 1885 the Nouvelle Carte de la Crimée, lithographed by Caron-Delamarre, was published in Paris.

OldNewMaps has overlain this 1885 French map of the Crimea on a Google Map. The map includes a transparency control so that you can compare the historical map of the Crimean peninsular with the modern Google Map. The map can also be viewed overlaid on an OpenStreetMap of Crimea.

Ukraine - a Country Divided

Photo by innaunique

With the situation changing almost daily it is hard to stay abreast of events in Ukraine. However a picture is worth a thousand words and a real-time picture is worth a thousand more. Therefore I have spent this morning exploring Ukraine on EchoSEC.

The EchoSec application displays social media messages and photos from Instagram, Twitter and Foursquare around any location. The link above has a bounding-box around Independence Square in Kiev. Beneath the map you can view a series of the latest photos submitted to Instagram, many of them showing the protests in Kiev.


A map is also worth a thousand words and both the Washington Post and Big Think have created maps that help explain the huge political divide in Ukraine. The Washington Post has mapped the 2010 Ukraine election results and Big Think the 2004 election results.

Both maps show a country almost split in half in their support for President Viktor Yanukovych or the Pro-European party. The president is pushing for ever more closer ties with Russia whilst the Pro-Europeans want closer integration with the European Union. The Washington Post map also attempts to show where the protests against Yanukovych are taking place, showing that at the moment the protests are almost exclusively in the areas where the Pro-European Party have most electoral support.

Ukraine's Public Transit Wayfinder

EasyWay is a public transit route-finding and directions application for 50 cities in Ukraine. The app allows passengers to get directions between any two locations on Ukraine's trams, buses and metro systems.

The application uses a familiar format of allowing users to enter a starting point and destination and presenting a suggested route on a Google Map, with step-by-step instructions provided in the map sidebar. The step-by step guide for each journey includes estimated travel times and the cost of the journey.

EasyWay also includes markers for airports and major train stations on the map, which is very handy for quickly finding routes between the major transport hubs.

Now and Then on Google Maps

The Center for Urban History of East Central Europe has created two interesting Google Maps exploring the history of Lviv, Ukraine.

The Lviv Interactive Map shows the locations of buildings, events and people who have been important in the history of the city. The locations are sorted by category and subcategories. For example, the history category of markers includes the sub-categories of Fin-de-siècle City, the Holocaust in Lviv, Jewish city, Postsocialist city, Sacred city, Secession City and Socialist City.


The Plan of Lemberg / Lviv uses the Google Maps API to display an 1863 map of the city, the 'Plan von Lemberg'.

Using the familiar Google Maps navigation tools users can zoom in on details of the map. Quick links to zoom in on important locations on the map are displayed in the map sidebar.

The European Championships on Street View

Today the UEFA European Football Championship starts. You can visit all eight stadiums, in the host nations of Poland and Ukraine, with Google Maps Street View.

The opening game of the tournament sees one of the host nations, Poland take on Greece at the National Stadium, Warsaw.


The final of the tournament will be held at the NSC Olimpiyskiy (Olympic Stadium) in Kyiv:


The other stadia to be explored in Ukraine are the Donbass Arena, in Donetsk, the Metalist Stadium in Kharkiv and the Arena Lviv. In Poland you can also visit the stadia in Poznan, Gdansk and Wroclaw.

Street View Arrives in Israel

Wailing Wall

Street View imagery is now available on Google Maps in Israel. The imagery is available in Jerusalem, Haifa and Tel Aviv and also in a few universities and museums dotted around the country.

If you haven't got time to check out all the new Israeli Street View you can cheat by taking a quick tour of Mini Israel, a miniature park located near Latrun, Israel in the Ayalon Valley, which also now has Street View imagery.


Church of Gethsemane

A number of cities in Ukraine also now have Street View (I think these are new). The cities include Kiev, Donetsk, Kharkiv, Odessa and L'viv.


Annunciation Cathedral, Kharkiv

Google Maps for Kiev

Поиск по карте

Whilst visiting Kiev if you want to know the best places to visit and the best places to eat then this Google Map guide to the town should prove invaluable.

The map allows you to search for points of interest in the capital of Ukraine. You can select what category and sub-categories that you wish to display on the map from the sidebar. The categories include cafes & restaurants, entertainment, tourism and finance.

Поиск транспорта

If you are visiting Kiev, Ukraine then this Google Map based route planner will help you get around town.

Using the map you can enter your starting point and destination and plan your route on the city's public transit system. The results of your search are displayed on the map and a step-by-step guide is outlined in the map sidebar.

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