Google Maps vs Yandex: How Russia’s Censorship War Plays Out on Maps
Censorship Reveals Russian Military Sites
Efforts by the Russian government to conceal the locations of military facilities from public view are ironically making those sites *more* visible, according to recent reports. The phenomenon highlights the challenges of censorship in the digital age and the unintended consequences of attempting to control information.
The Russian company Yandex, often referred to as “Russia’s Google,” has been ordered by the Ministry of Defence to blur out military installations on its map service, Yandex Maps. This action, intended to protect sensitive locations from potential Ukrainian drone attacks, has instead drawn attention to them. As a Ukrainian tech blog reported last summer, the blurred areas on Yandex Maps clearly indicate the presence of military-industrial complex enterprises, a detail easily discernible when compared to Google Maps, where these sites remain fully visible.
Specifically, Yandex has blurred locations such as the Avangard plant, the National Research Institute of Long-Radar Locations, and the Khrunichev Plant building complex in Moscow. These sites, while obscured on Yandex Maps, are readily identifiable on Google Maps. The blurring, rather than concealing, effectively spotlights their importance and strategic value.
This isn’t an isolated incident. In January 2025, a Moscow court ordered Yandex to hide maps and images of oil refineries following a series of Ukrainian drone attacks targeting Russia’s fuel infrastructure. The court mandated that Yandex remove or retouch images of key refinery components – workshops, compressor stations, and tank storage areas – to reduce their vulnerability. This ruling came after Russian regulators determined that detailed images of these facilities were easily accessible through Yandex Maps.
The move to censor mapping data follows a broader pattern of increasing government control over the digital lives of Russian citizens. Following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russia blocked access to popular Western social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter). Subsequent restrictions have targeted YouTube and the encrypted messaging app Signal, with WhatsApp facing similar limitations more recently. While Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) initially offered a workaround, the government has also cracked down on their reliability.
Even simple online searches are now fraught with risk. Last fall, a man was arrested and charged with conducting an “illegal internet search” after looking up information about a Ukrainian military unit, raising concerns that internet service providers may be sharing user search data with security services.
In response to these restrictions, the Russian government is actively promoting domestic alternatives to Western online tools, encouraging the use of VKontakte instead of Facebook, Max instead of Signal, and Yandex instead of Google. Yandex, founded around the same time as Google in the 1990s, has become a frequent target of Roskomnadzor, Russia’s media regulator, tasked with “ensuring stability in society” through media monitoring and censorship.
Yandex’s compliance with government demands has taken various forms, including the removal of images depicting damaged buildings in Mariupol, the deletion of a marker indicating the grave of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, and the suppression of search results from blacklisted news sources. However, as the case of the blurred military facilities demonstrates, censorship can backfire, inadvertently revealing information that would otherwise remain less conspicuous.
The situation extends beyond Moscow. Reports indicate that similar blurring is occurring in other cities, including St. Petersburg, where portions of the Kirov Plant and a tractor factory have been obscured, and in Novosibirsk, where Tolmachevo Airport has been affected. This widespread censorship effort, while intended to enhance security, is ultimately proving counterproductive, highlighting the limitations of controlling information in an interconnected world.
The city of Rostov, located near the Ukrainian border, presents a particularly complex case. Yandex Maps stopped displaying borders altogether in 2022, stating the emphasis would be on “natural features, not state borders.” Rostov, a major military town with a population of approximately one million, is vulnerable to Ukrainian drone attacks, and residents frequently receive “drone danger” alerts. In January, Russian forces reportedly shot down twenty-five Ukrainian drones over the Rostov region, resulting in civilian casualties and property damage.