Coca-Cola bungle causes diplomatic incident in Eastern Europe

ALL Coca-Cola wanted to do was wish Russia happy new year and it backfired spectacularly when it released this advert.

A BUNGLED bid by Coca-Cola to wish Russians a happy new year triggered a diplomatic incident.

The soft drink giant removed a controversial map from the Russian social media website VK yesterday after Ukraine complained to the American government.

It first had enraged Russia with its new year’s message as the map it posted did not have Crimea on it.

Pressure from VK users saw the corporation publish the map again — this time making sure Crimea was on it — and apologised for leaving it off the first time.

Who owns the territory of Crimea is a very sore point in the region so Coca-Cola implying it belonged to Russia sparked outrage in Ukraine.

One of the tweets alerting Coca-Cola to their mistake.

The country’s MPs and ambassadors called for a boycott and the Ukranian Embassy in Washington DC took its concerns to Coca-Cola and the US government.

A message on its Facebook page said: “The Embassy has expressed its concerns to the Coca-Cola company and the US Department of State about the posting in social media by Coca-Cola’s Russian office of a map of Russia that included the illegally occupied Crimea.

“The Embassy emphasised that Coca-Cola’s actions violate the official US 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.”

This led Coca-Cola to think deleting it was the best thing for all and it says an ad agency was to blame for the map.

In a statement the soft drinks giant said: “The Coca-Cola Russia team had a stylised map of Russia created as part of its Christmas campaign.

“The agency that created the map later made changes without our knowledge or approval.

“We, as a company, do not take political positions unrelated to our business, and we apologise for the post, which we have removed.”

Originally published as Coca-Cola bungle causes diplomatic incident in Eastern Europe