From the very beginning of the invasion of Ukraine,. From aspiring to conquer the country, with its capital as a key piece and with Volodimir Zelensky as the number one objective, the offensive began to be located in Donbas and to sporadic and surprise bombings in the rest of the country.
At times on the attack, at times overwhelmed by the Ukrainian counteroffensivelas Putin’s troops continue with their uncertainty. and from her errors arise like the last one that is now picked up by the international press.
YandexRussia’s leading online mapping service, has wanted to blur numerous strategic locations and, therefore, sensitive, near the northwest border of the country. The problem is that by doing so, it has allowed locate more than a hundred facilities of capital importance for the Russian army. Until 119 points of interest which had deliberately remained off Russia’s public map radar.
The error was immediately published thanks to a joint investigation by media from Nordic and Baltic countries collected by Euromaidan Press.
This, in addition to being a catastrophic error for those responsible, has a name, the ‘Streisand effect’, consisting of the fact that when trying to hide or blur information, what is achieved is the opposite effect, publicizing or revealing it.
And yes, that name obviously has to do with singer and actress Barbra Streisandwho in 2003 sued a photographer and a website for an aerial photo of his mansion that he wanted to immediately delete. That image, which had not had any echo until the lawsuit, became one of the best known of the moment.
And the blurring of more than a hundred points on Yandex maps led to a logical reaction from the international media. Look for what was at each point because, obviously, something had to be hidden.
The result was immediate: air bases, shipyards, logistics warehouses, air defense facilitiesenclaves of weapons and/or nuclear and energy development… A ‘candy’ at the war level so that Ukraine knows where and what to attack.
