Markos has already written at size on lies, damned lies, and battlefield maps. There’s an incredible tendency on this warfare to mirror Russian management not as one thing restricted to some villages tagged in passing alongside the freeway, however as if it extends to all of the cities, fields, and woods mendacity in between. On some maps, it’s as if every Russian truck passing down the freeway represents a massive paintbrush, coloring all the world behind it pink.

However there’s an even bigger downside constructed into these maps than simply how the symbolize areas of management. Additionally they include an infinite prejudice about situations on the bottom, and even the course of the warfare. 

This thread from cartographer Levi Westerveld seems on the evolution of the maps utilized by the New York Instances over the past 4 weeks. Beginning with this map, two days into the warfare, it’s simple to see how the map suggests Russia is spreading out quickly and forcefully, overtaking giant areas of Ukraine and securing them. It’s not simply that it colours all the world between and across the positions of Russian forces as in the event that they’re already locked down, even the graphics used to indicate Russian actions counsel energy and velocity.

What’s fully lacking from that NYT map? Any signal of the Ukrainian forces. There’s not a single indicator to indicate the place the Russian advance may be assembly resistance, or to indicate cities underneath Ukrainian management. This map is a narrative about Russia — energetic and powerful — and Ukraine as an totally passive sufferer.

Every week later and Russia nonetheless has these giant areas underneath management and all these shifting arrows. Nonetheless, now the areas of management are just a bit much less authoritatively coloured, and there are strains that present limits of advance — even when these limits are nonetheless described solely when it comes to what Russia is doing.

It takes one other week for Ukrainian forces to truly seem on the map. Every week after that, Russian forces and Ukrainian forces are lastly present with symbols of equal sizes and depth. The shaded areas of Russian management have been changed with pink dots displaying cities and cities occupied by Russian troops, and there are additionally some cities proven in Ukrainian blue. 

These New York Instances maps inform a narrative — however it’s not the story that the Instances graphics division got down to inform. They offer a visible approximation of the best way pundits, each within the pages of the NYT and elsewhere, have handled Putin’s warfare from the outset. First as an inevitable Russian walkover, then with snide assurances about Russia’s inevitable victory, and eventually with a grudging admittance that Ukraine is definitely taking part in a job in its personal future.

To get one other sense of simply how a lot is cooked into these maps, that is the newest map of Ukraine from @War_Mapper on Twitter. That account has commonly produced a few of the most correct, updated maps of motion in Ukraine, bringing in updates from every day’s reported motion. 

Now, look down on the far decrease proper of that picture and find Mariupol. Then look only a tiny bit west to seek out the port metropolis of Berdyansk. That location — solidly within the “pink zone” since day two of the warfare — is the place, on Thursday morning, a Russian warship was sunk, two others broken, a warehouse of provides and ammunition was blown up, and Russian armored automobiles on the docks had been broken or destroyed. All of that befell within the space that was presupposed to be underneath Russian management.

That’s why, of all of the maps of actions in Ukraine, this stays probably the most correct map.

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