It was into this morass that Coca-Cola unwittingly tread with their Russian New Year’s message published on VK, the largest social network in Russia, after it opted to erase the territory.
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Faced with barrage of criticism from Russian VK users, it published the map again on Tuesday – this time with Crimea – and apologized.
“The Embassy emphasised that Coca-Cola’s actions violate the official USA position condemning Russia’s illegal occupation of Crimea, which is, and has always been, an integral part of Ukraine, and urged the company to immediately correct the mistake”.
However, the map didn’t include Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave located between Poland and Lithuania that is internationally recognized as Russian territory, or the Kuril Islands, the western Pacific archipelago Moscow seized from Japan in 1945 and whose ownership is still disputed.
Later the company also issued an apology to Ukrainians, and removed the advert entirely.
The Ukrainian embassy in the USA said on Facebook on Thursday that a meeting with Kate Irvin, the head of the Washington office of Coca-Cola, had taken place in the Ukrainian diplomatic mission on Wednesday and that Irvin during that meeting had officially apologized for the misunderstanding caused by the publication by the company’s Russian office of a map showing Crimea as part of Russia.
“We apologisse. The map has been corrected”.
It quickly republished the photo to include Crimea, only for Ukrainians to threaten to boycott the company.
Ukraine adopted additional measures and reinforced the checkpoints on the Belarusian-Ukrainian border as Russian Federation introduced a new regime of cargo transit to Kazakhstan (via Belarus), the press service of the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine informed. It has apologized, saying the ad agency that created the original map later made changes without Coke’s knowledge or approval.
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“Ukrainians were quick to respond on social media, with many using the hashtag “#BanColaCola”.
