Friday, February 25, 2022

The Russian Invasion in Real-Time

Update: Lisa Charlotte Muth has been doing a fantastic job collating links to maps being created by the news media to visualize the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Her Twitter map thread includes links to maps created by just about every major global newspaper and news organization. 

I'm not going to link to all these maps as you can find the links on Lisa's thread. However here are links to some of the prominent news sources which are most likely to feature recently updated maps of the ongoing war in Ukraine. 

  • The BBC's Ukraine maps: Tracking Russia's invasion includes a map showing 'the fight for Kyiv'. A timestamp at the top of the article shows when the page was last updated
  • The New York Times has a Maps of the Conflict section dedicated to explaining the on-going situation in Eastern Europe
  • The Washington Post's In videos, photos and maps is a live stream covering the war, therefore the latest news, maps and other media appear at the top of the page. The Washington Post also has a Maps of Russia's invasion which features the latest maps of the war created by the newspaper.

For the last eight years the Live Universal Awareness Map (Liveuamap) has been mapping Russia's attempts to destabilize Ukraine (although since 2014 the map has also expanded to cover other areas of the world suffering from on-going conflicts, including Syria and Israel-Palestine). 

Liveuamap uses web crawlers to find the latest news stories about border conflicts and military deployments. These stories are then fact-checked and if found to be accurate are added to the interactive Live Universal Awareness Map. The latest events 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 and NATO actions and the red markers show the actions of the Russian military.

People living near the Russian border are obviously going to have a very close view of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Many of these eye witnesses will then post video and photographic evidence of Russia's invasion on social media. 

Thanks to the Centre For Information Resilience you can now explore these social media posts on an interactive map. The Russia-Ukraine Monitor Map allows you to explore crowdsourced media of Russia's military attack on Ukraine. The Centre for Information Resilience is an independent, non-profit organization which attempts to counter and expose disinformation campaigns, such as those run by Russia to try and garner support in the west for its attack on Ukraine. 

The Russia-Ukraine Monitor Map includes links to video and photographs of Russian military action posted to social media. The Centre for Information Resilience has collated, geolocated, and, where possible, verified these posts. The Centre's Eyes on Russia Project also publishes a weekly summary of its research into Russia's military campaign against Ukraine, detailing verified troop and equipment movements, and broader updates on Russia's other efforts to destabilize its neighbor. 

Wikipedia's Russo-Ukrainian War Detailed Map is a crowd-sourced map which shows the current status of towns and cities in Ukraine in terms of whether they are under Ukrainian or Russian control. Cities marked blue on the map are currently under Ukrainian control and cities shown with a red circle are under Russian control. 

The map is created from the Wikipedia article Cities and Towns during the Russo-Ukrainian War. The status of each town is determined by a creditable source. However it is worth remembering that all the maps on this page are snapshots of a quickly developing situation and can become quickly out-of-date.

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