Russia’s government has told Apple to explain itself. Several apps belonging to the Russian technology group VK have been pulled from the App Store. The Kremlin wants to know why.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov spoke at a press briefing on Thursday. He said Russian officials would contact Apple directly and ask for a formal explanation. He also told Russians to consider switching to Android phones. He suggested they use homegrown Russian technology services instead.
VK is one of Russia’s largest technology companies. The state has a controlling interest in it. Its apps include VKontakte, the social media platform often described as Russia’s equivalent of Facebook, as well as Odnoklassniki, a messaging service, a video platform, email products and educational tools.
The company said Apple removed all of its apps without any prior notice. It said it had never appeared on any sanctions list. It also said it had obtained legal opinions from both Russian and international lawyers to confirm this.
“Apple is restricting Russian users’ access to popular services used daily by tens of millions of people,” VK said in a statement. The company added that existing users could still open apps already on their devices. However, those users would no longer receive push notifications for new messages or updates.
According to Reuters, the Kremlin described Apple’s behaviour as damaging to the interests of tens of millions of people, including Russian speakers living outside Russia who also use VK products.
Peskov went further. He said the removal of Russian apps was not a new development. He pointed to the earlier removal of Max, a state-backed messaging application also developed by VK. Apple told BBC News Russian that it removed Max in order to comply with sanctions, though it did not name which ones. Max was pulled from the App Store in early June.
The Russian government had invested heavily in Max. President Vladimir Putin signed a law in 2025 declaring it a national messaging platform. New phones sold in Russia were required to have it pre-installed. The government had also been throttling access to WhatsApp and Telegram to push users toward Max.
Some security researchers had raised concerns about Max before its removal. The web infrastructure company Cloudflare briefly flagged it as spyware, though the label was later removed. Researchers noted that the app could reportedly detect whether a user was running a VPN. Max denied all claims that it monitored users.
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Russia’s Digital Development Ministry also waded in on Thursday. It accused Apple of cutting off more than 20 million Russian iPhone users from VK services without explanation. It said it had asked Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service to look into the matter as a matter of urgency.
Officials also raised a separate issue. They said Apple had failed to follow Russian law requiring default search engine options to be set to domestic providers and requiring foreign phone manufacturers to install Russian app stores on their devices.
This is not the first time VK apps have been removed from the App Store. In September 2022, Apple removed them following British sanctions. They were restored less than a month later. But Peskov said Thursday’s situation raised deeper questions. He said it called into question Apple’s reliability as a company that Russian users and businesses could trust.
Apple did not respond to requests for comment on Thursday.
The episode is the latest sign of the growing gulf between Russia and Western technology companies. Apple’s own transparency report shows it removed 1,213 apps from the Russian App Store in 2025 alone. That compares with 171 in 2024 and just 12 in 2023.
