Apple reveals it bowed to Kremlin pressure to remove 190 apps from Russian App Store over three years

Apple removed 190 apps from its Russian App Store at the request of Russian media regulator Roskomnadzor between 2022 and 2024, the company’s own annual transparency reports for those three years show.

Though the number of apps removed from the Russian App Store has risen every year, that number rose hugely in 2024, when the Russian authorities began cracking down far more aggressively on online freedoms than it previously had done.

After removing just seven apps in 2022, and 12 in 2023, Apple deleted 171 apps in 2024, meaning that Russia ranked second only to China by the number of apps removed at the request of the authorities.

In the vast majority of cases — 182 out of 190 — Roskomnadzor invoked the same piece of Russian legislation setting out the grounds for blocking websites in its requests to the US tech giant. These range from the dissemination of materials by “undesirable organisations” to incitement to terrorism. A further seven apps were removed for breaching Russian financial laws, specifically to combat illegal securities trading, online fraudsters and the theft of personal data.

Though Apple doesn’t detail which apps were banned each year in its reports, the apps it removed from the Russian app store in 2024 included the Foton-2024 app, developed by Alexey Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation in the run-up to that year’s presidential election, which allowed users to randomly determine which of Vladimir Putin’s three opponents to vote for.

Others included apps for US funded broadcaster Radio Liberty, Current Time TV and some 98 apps offering users virtual private networks (VPNs), which are needed to access blocked websites. Data for years prior to 2022 has not been made available, and figures for 2025 have not yet been published.

When asked to comment on its removal of apps in late 2024, Apple said that failure to comply with Russia’s local laws “could mean that Apple would no longer be able to operate an App Store or distribute content in the country”, and added that the US government had encouraged it to continue to work in Russia as “democratic principles are best aided through the availability of these services”.