Collecting and Analysing Yandex Maps blurs
Norwegian public broadcaster NRK investigated Russia's growing defense industry by analyzing blurs on Yandex Maps. They found that the company intentionally obscured military factories, airfields, and other sensitive sites, revealing the scale of Russia's military expansion despite official secrecy.
Background
- This article investigates how Russian military and defense sites (e.g., weapons factories, airfields) are obscured by blurring on Yandex Maps, Russia's dominant mapping service, similar to how sensitive sites are blurred on Google Maps or Apple Maps elsewhere.
- The key company is Yandex (often called "Russia's Google"), which provides search, maps, email, ride-hailing, and other services. After Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Yandex's Dutch parent sold its Russian assets; the Russian state now effectively controls the domestic operations.
- The investigation collected coordinates of blurred areas on Yandex Maps and cross-referenced them with known industrial and military sites, finding that blurs often correlate with defense-industry locations — some of which produce equipment used in the war in Ukraine.
- Why this matters: the blurring obscures the scale and activity of Russia's wartime defense production from open-source intelligence (OSINT) researchers, journalists, and the public. The piece is a case study in how a nominally commercial tech platform can be used to support state secrecy during an active conflict.