On Monday, December 10, 2018, the secretary of the Board of Directors of the OpenStreetMap Foundation announced on the lists1 that the Board had abrogated the recent decision of the Data Working Group on the affiliation of Crimea2. According to the mentioned decision, Crimea had to be seen only as part of Russia. This caused resentment from the Ukrainian OpenStreetMap community and an appeal to the Board of the OpenStreetMap Foundation with the complaint against this DWG decision was filed.

The decision taken in June 2014 is currently in use3. Accordingly, Crimea is designated as the part of Ukraine and Russia at the same time and it may be marked as a disputed territory.

A more comprehensive statement will follow in the next weeks.


  1. https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2018-December/081781.html ↩

  2. https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Working_Group_Minutes/DWG_2018-11-14_Crimea ↩

  3. https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Working_Group_Minutes/DWG_2014-06-05_Special_Crimea ↩