Unhappy new year for Coca-Cola as it upsets first Russia, then Ukraine

All Coca-Cola wanted to do was to wish consumers a happy new year, but instead it ended up stirring anger in two markets, Russia and Ukraine, over the disputed territory of Crimea.

The Ukrainian Black Sea peninsula was annexed by Moscow in March 2014 and remains a trigger issue in the Russian-Ukrainian crisis today.

In a new year’s message on VK, the most popular Russian social media network, Coca-Cola published a map of Russia that did not include Crimea.

Faced with barrage of criticism from Russian users of VK, it published the map again on Tuesday, this time including Crimea, and apologised. For good measure, the new map also included the Kuril Islands, the western Pacific archipelago that Moscow seized in 1945 from Japan, which still claims it.

The second version also included Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave situated between Poland and Lithuania, that is globally recognised as belonging to Moscow.

But by including Crimea, Coca-Cola unleashed a firestorm in Ukraine, where demands for a boycott of the soft drink got under way.

On Tuesday, the corporation threw in the towel and simply dropped the new year’s message. “Dear friends! Thank you for your attention. It has been decided to delete the item which caused the upset,” Coca-Cola’s Ukrainian subsidiary said on Facebook.

Relations between Russia and Ukraine plunged after the latter’s pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovich, was ousted by pro-European demonstrators in February 2014.

Russia responded by annexing Crimea, while ethnically Russian Ukrainians seized control over parts of eastern Ukraine, beginning a conflict that has left more than 9,000 dead since April 2014.