Tuesday, March 08, 2022

Ukrainian & Russian Casualties

The Ukrainian Civilian Objects Attacks and Casualties Interactive Map is an attempt to track and map Russian attacks on civilian targets in Ukraine.The map consists predominantly of geo-tagged photographs of civilian buildings which have been damaged by Russian bombs. The map also includes a running total of the number of civilians who have been killed and injured by Russia's illegal war against Ukraine.

The map includes a timeline which means that you can browse the civilian casualties of Russian bombs by both date and location. If you click on a date or on a map marker then photographs of the damage caused by Russian bombs will be shown in the map sidebar. If you click on one of these photographs a slideshow will open so you can browse all the submitted photos from that location.

The map doesn't have an 'about' page but it does link to the Ukrainian government website. The map however doesn't appear to have a Ukrainian government URL so it is more likely to have been created by developers in support of the Ukrainian people (if you know more about the map's origins please let me know in the comments below).

Карта Мира is another interactive map which includes no 'about' page.This map claims to provide reliable information about Russian soldiers who have gone missing in the Russian attack on Ukraine. 

The map consists of map markers which purport to show the origins of soldiers captured or who have gone missing in Ukraine.If you click on these markers you can view photographs of the missing soldiers or of their documentation and an indication if they are in captivity or if they have died.

Because neither of these two maps have an 'about' page nor an explanation of their data collection methodologies it is impossible to verify their authenticity. The information on the map of Russian soldiers captured and killed in the Ukraine is particularly hard to verify because it is widely believed that Russia is intentionally under-reporting the number of soldiers killed and captured in the war in Ukraine.

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