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Historical imagery and Ukraine

June 27, 2016

As we have mentioned in the past Google Earth does not have any imagery of Ukraine since June 2015, which puts it on the list of censored countries that includes Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. However, a recent report on the citizen journalism site Bellingcat states that Google recently added some historical imagery from July 17, 2014, the day of the downing of Flight MH17. In fact they even know the exact time the image was captured: 11:08am (local time). Google Earth does not show the time that imagery was captured but the reporters at Bellingcat know exactly which DigitalGlobe image was used, and DigitalGlobe does know the exact time that a given image was captured.

If they are correct that the image was only recently added to Google Earth, this would suggest that whatever mechanism has been used to censor the country does not extend to historical imagery from 2014. Also of note is the fact that the Ukraine received Street View in October 2015 although it doesn’t appear to have been updated since then. The most recent Street View we could find was dated July 2015. There is no Street View in most of the eastern parts of the country and Crimea. There is some Street View of Donetsk, but that is dated 2011.

As you can see below, the new sighting of the BUK that is believed to have been used to shoot down Flight MH17 isn’t very significant, as it just adds an extra point to the fairly well documented route of the vehicle that day as identified by Bellingcat from various sources.


The green pin shows the new sighting.

To see the above locations in Google Earth download this KML file Note that the truck carrying the BUK can not be seen in the imagery in most of the locations marked, but rather it is known to have been at those locations at those times because of various photos / videos of it. See this Bellingcat report for the sources of the locations.

At one point Russia released a fake photo supposedly showing a fighter jet shooting down flight MH17.

Filed Under: Site News Tagged With: historical imagery, ukraine

Turkey, Ukraine and Macedonia get Street View

October 22, 2015

Street View has been added to Turkey, Ukraine and Macedonia. The last major additions prior to this one were the Philippines and shortly before that some Kenyan parks. We saw some ‘historical Street View’ in Ukraine dated 2011, suggesting that there were political hurdles to cross before releasing Street View there.


Street View changes from September 16th, 2015 to October 20th, 2015. Changes are marked in red. Large version.


Quadcopter drone being flown in Istanbul, Turkey.


Rumelihisarı fortress, Istanbul, Turkey.


St Nicholas Cathedral, Kyiv, Ukraine.


Church of Saint Clement of Ohrid, Skopje, Macedonia.

To find the above locations in Google Earth, download this KML file.

Filed Under: Street View Tagged With: macedonia, street view, turkey, ukraine

Tracking Flight MH17 in Google Earth

July 23, 2014

Last week, Malaysia Airlines flight 17 was shot down over Ukraine by a surface-to-air missile, killing all 298 people on board. While blame is still being passed around for the crash, there are some places using Google Earth to try to better understand what happened.

First is the photo below, found via Twitter, which is using Google Earth to show the path of the flight, the path of the missile, and the crash site. At this point I’ve not been able to find a KML file for this image, but the image itself is rather striking:

MH17 in Google Earth

Next is a series of images of the crash site, provided by DigitalGlobe. As they often do after a major news event, DigitalGlobe was able to capture imagery of the crash site to help document it from the air. They were unable to capture imagery on July 17 due to cloud cover, but have some from a few days around it.

MH17 DigitalGlobe

They’ve also released two KML files to show some of the imagery:

  • Pre-crash KML
  • Post-crash KML

That info comes to us from Amy Svitak at Aviation Week, who has a full article with more photos that is worth checking out.

Filed Under: Flying Tagged With: amy svitak, aviation week, digitalglobe, malaysia airlines, mh17, ukraine



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