Apple Removes VK and Mail.ru Apps From the App Store

VK was founded by Yuri Milner, who has helped "Russian state organizations with ties to Vladimir Putin" invest in other companies, according to the Paradise Papers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VK_(company)#Controversies

I have very fleeting knowledge of this, but at this point and considering the past two decades as well as the past year, the burden is on them to demonstrate their independence. I'm assuming that they are as good as under the control of the Russian government, but allowing that it may be against their wishes. They may simply wish to avoid contracting the seasonal Stair flu.

This is an example of why I don't believe hardware/OS makers/ISPs should have any right to limit what runs on their 'platform'. They make tools, not mind control devices.

This action won't be hurting the Russian government. It will be hurting normal people who saved quite a few months of salary to buy something as expensive as an iPhone. Now they may not be able to receive their email on their only device. And if you think angry Russian iPhone users can change government policy, there's a word to describe you: useful idiot.

If Apple couldn't prevent people from running whatever they wanted, they wouldn't have to apply governments' sanctions on what software their users can run, and thereby harm them.

Banning VK inside Russia is a hostile act from a foreign country. We'd be pissed if Saudi Arabia were to ban us from using apps made by our companies in the West, even if the App Store had been invented by Saudis and were hosted in Saudi Arabia.

I wonder how Russia will react. iPhone exploits to allow their software to be installed regardless? Making their own phones without Android or iOS, perhaps in collaboration with China? Banning Apple and Google devices from connecting to the phone system?

FWIW, I think I read somewhere that Apple was following British sanctions on this because that's the law it chose under which European app developers must register.

It's laugh out loud funny to see people framing this as "a strike agains government control" when it's an actual example of government control. Except it's western democracies banning things in a different country because... all russians bad?

Calling for VK to demonstrate their independence is all fine and good. But what about accepting that Apple has just demonstrated (again) that they're not independent?

There are several big IT companies in Russia, but the two biggest ones are: Yandex and Mail.ru Group.

Mail.ru basically was taken over by government via shady deals a while ago. The process of of absorbing it for the full control of people closely tied to Kremlin drastically lowered the quality of their software and services, but over time they got a bit better.
So Mail.ru "acquired" many other big companies like VK (formally VKontakte, founded by Pavel Durov, who lost control of the company after refusing to cooperate with gov, fled the country and started Telegram), Odnoklassniki, Rambler Search etc. Some are still competitive, some are not so much. But yes, all their stuff is very much aligned with the state agenda.

Yandex was different, many of the key people were against the cooperation with gov. But since the war started they are loosing the company, many parts of the brand are "sold" to various new pro-gov players. The core part is still there, but we do not know for how long.