On October 27-28th, Georgian and Russian-language (1,2,3,4,5,6) Facebook accounts shared photos of a map that shows Kherson, Zaporozhe and the so-called “People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk” as parts of the Russian Federation. According to the attached description, similar maps appear in Spanish geography textbooks.
Following October 27th, pro-Kremlin outlets, including News Front (1,2,3,4), have been circulating photos of the same map and voicing similar claims.
The photos disseminated online are altered by software and are not present in Spanish textbooks. In fact, the photo shows a map featured in a geography textbook published in Mexico in 2016, on which Kherson, Zaporozhe and the so-called “People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk ” are labelled as the territories of Ukraine and not Russia.
The photos that went viral on the internet do not depict Spanish textbooks, but a sixth-grade geography textbook issued by the Mexican Ministry of Education. According to the information provided in the textbook, its first edition was printed in 2010, and the following editions were printed in 2011, 2014 and 2016. The map shown in the photos is from the 2016 edition, which was intended for the 2016-2017 school years.
The map of Europe can be found on the fifteenth page of the book. The map clearly shows that the regions of Kherson and Zaporozhe, as well as the so-called “People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk,” are part of Ukraine. The map shows that the Crimean peninsula also belongs to Ukraine. Accordingly, the version of the map, which was distributed by Russian outlets, is altered.
The fact that the mentioned map matches the internationally recognized borders is further confirmed by the fact that the Russian-occupied territories of Georgia are shown as part of Georgia.
Notably, neither Spain nor Mexico recognizes the so-called “referendum on the inclusion of 4 regions of Ukraine into Russia.” On October 12th, both countries, along with 141 other states, supported the UN resolution on the territorial integrity of Ukraine.
The Ukrainian fact-checking organization Stopfake also verified the photos and found out that they were altered by software.
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