The New York Times has maps tracking the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I wondered what the data source of the first one was: were they maybe using OSM?

Mappers on the #openstreetmap IRC channel quickly found some differences. Just to be absolutely sure, I used the QuickOSM plugin for QGIS to download OSM data for the area from overpass. I then quickly styled the map, using the colour picker to copy the Times map. In half an hour, I had my own map of Kharkiv.

The maps are quite different. The OSM-based one has more roads, especially in the forest. The land use is more accurate and up to date. The Ukraine community has done a great job.

The New York Times isn’t using OpenStreetMap, but an inferior, probably commercial source. Otherwise, their map would be better ;).