Coca-Cola Blames Ad Agency for Map Showing Crimea as Part of Russia
By REUTERS

MOSCOW/KIEV — U.S. drinks firm Coca-Cola on Wednesday blamed a marketing agency for a map used in an online advertising campaign that showed Crimea to be part of Russia and which drew protests and threats of a boycott from angry Ukrainians.

Russia annexed the peninsula from Ukraine in March 2014, leading to condemnation from Western governments which imposed sanctions on Russia in response. Only a handful of countries have recognized Crimea’s incorporation into Russia.

In a statement on Wednesday, Coca-Cola said: “We, as a company, don’t support any political movements. The company has removed the post and apologizes for the situation that occurred.”

Coca-Cola said that the map, which appeared on Dec. 30 on Coca-Cola’s page on VKontakte, a Russian social networking site similar to Facebook, had been changed by an advertising agency without Coca-Cola’s approval.

Furious Ukrainians took to social media to vent their anger against Coca-Cola, and some threatened to boycott the company’s products.

Ukraine’s embassy in the United States said in a statement on its Facebook page that it had expressed concerns to the company and to the U.S. State Department.

“The Embassy emphasized that Coca-Cola’s actions violate the official U.S. position condemning Russia’s illegal occupation of Crimea, which is and has always been an integral part of Ukraine,” the statement said.

Coca-Cola is not the only multinational company to have inadvertently faced embarrassment recently because of the festering tensions between Russians and Ukrainians.

Google said on Tuesday that problems experienced by some users in translating terms into Russian from Ukrainian using Google Translate were the result of errors in its automated algorithms, Russian agency RBC reported.

Earlier Ukrainian media had reported that the translation service was rendering “Russian Federation” as “Mordor”, a region in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings which is ruled by the evil character Sauron, and “Russians” as “occupiers”.

可口可樂新年賀圖 一口氣得罪俄、烏兩國

一則社群貼文，同時惹怒俄羅斯和烏克蘭。可口可樂在社群網站張貼繪有俄國地圖的新年賀圖，但未把克里米亞納入；在俄國用戶抗議下，5日重新貼圖納入克里米亞，卻惹怒了不承認克里米亞被俄併吞的烏克蘭。「父子騎驢」的可口可樂最後乾脆刪文。

上月30日，可口可樂在俄羅斯最具人氣的社群網站VK發表恭賀新年訊息，附圖是紅色為底，以白雪為意象的俄國地圖，但有用戶抗議該圖未見克里米亞。

本月5日，可口可樂發表更新版的地圖並向俄國網友道歉。新版地圖不但加入克里米亞，還加入位於波蘭和立陶宛的飛地（enclave，指位於外國領土間的領地）「加里寧格勒」，以及1945年自日本手上奪來、迄今仍有領土爭議的千島群島。

2014年3月克里米亞共和國舉辦公投，居民一面倒贊成脫離烏克蘭加入俄羅斯，俄國總統普亭隨即正式併吞。

新版地圖雖稱了俄羅斯的意，卻犯烏克蘭眾怒，烏克蘭民眾揚言抵制可口可樂。最後可口可樂5日刪除貼文，烏克蘭分公司在臉書發文表示：「親愛的朋友，感謝您的關注，我們決定刪除引起不快的項目。

可口可樂位於美國亞特蘭大的總部5日晚間也發表聲明，圖案設計公司在未知會他們的情況下逕行改圖，為引發爭議一事道歉。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2016/01/06/world/europe/06reuters-ukraine-russia-coca-cola.html

2016-01-07．Upaper．6．世界．編譯莊蕙嘉