Russian internet users were left bemused after the U.S. Energy Association omitted Ukraine and Belarus and placed Russia’s westernmost region of Kaliningrad back into German hands in a pre-World War II map released ahead of U.S. President Donald Trump’s meeting with Baltic leaders.
The USEA published the map without a caption in a press release touting U.S. energy cooperation with Baltic states as Trump prepared to host the regions' three heads of state at the White House on Tuesday.
News of the gaffe first appeared on Twitter before becoming widely publicized by the Russian blogger Ilya Varlamov, who wrote a post about the map on his popular Telegram channel.
“The American Energy Association illustrated its article about the America-Baltic summit, during which the U.S will discuss energy independence from Russia with the leaders of those states, with a pre-war map,” the blogger wrote.
The map, which is believed to date back to 1925 by the Library of Congress, also listed St. Petersburg as Leningrad and the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius as a Polish city.
The USEA has since removed the map from their press release.
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