Shortly after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, Apple suspended sales in Russia and removed propaganda apps like RT and Sputnik. But it now appears to be collaborating with Roskomnadzor by removing not only independent media outlets but also vital censorship-circumvention tools such as VPNs (virtual private networks) from its App Store.
A study by GreatFire, a project which was originally created to monitor censorship in China, concluded on 25 September that nearly 100 VPN apps had been removed from Apple’s Russian App Store, including 25 at Roskomnadzor’s request in July 2024. RSF and 27 other international and Russian civil society organisations published an open letter condemning this decision.
When contacted by RSF, Apple defended its actions on the grounds of its obligation to comply with local laws, and it denied having proactively removed VPN apps from the App Store.
“Failure to comply with lawful orders could mean that Apple would no longer be able to operate an App Store or distribute content in the country,” Apple’s representative said to RSF. “The United States government has encouraged companies to continue to make communications services available to the Russian people because democratic principles are best aided through the availability of these services.”
Apple’s compliance with arbitrary orders from an authoritarian state calls into question its public commitment to freedom of information, which is set out in “Our Commitment to Human Rights,” a declaration adopted in 2020. It also raises fears of a repetition of its actions in 2017 in China, the world’s biggest jailer of journalists, when the company blocked VPNs on Chinese iPhones, which had allowed Internet users, including many journalists and their sources, to protect themselves from surveillance and to connect to sites banned in China such as Facebook, Google and Wikipedia.
Despite Western sanctions on Russia, Apple continues to prosper there thanks to indirect imports of iPhones. In 2024, iPhone sales constituted 12% of the Russian smartphone market, more than in 2020, according to an article published this week by the Russian media outlet The Moscow Times, which is banned in Russia.
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