Kremlin demands an explanation from Apple after VK apps vanish from the App Store

On Thursday, a clutch of apps belonging to the Russian tech group VK disappeared from Apple’s App Store, and by the afternoon the Kremlin was asking why.

Dmitry Peskov, the presidential spokesman, said the government expected an explanation from Apple. He also offered Russians a workaround that doubled as a message: switch operating systems.

The removals were broad. Gone from the store were VK’s social networks VKontakte and Odnoklassniki, along with the VK Video, VK Messenger, VK Music, and VK Dating apps, the Mail.ru email client, and the content platform Dzen, according to Meduza.

VK warned that iPhone users would stop receiving push notifications across its suite, and said millions of users were affected.

VKontakte and Odnoklassniki are among the most widely used social platforms in Russia, and Dzen is one of the country’s larger content aggregators, which gives the removals an unusually broad domestic reach.

VK called the move “completely unprompted and unacceptable,” and said Apple had removed the apps “without warning.”

Its central defence was a flat denial of any legal trigger: the company “has never been subject to sanctions and has never appeared on any sanctions list,” it said.

Apple has not given a detailed public account of the latest removals. Its only recent explanation came earlier this month, when it told BBC News Russian that it had pulled VK’s state-backed Max messenger to comply with sanctions, without specifying which ones.

The company has not connected that reasoning to Thursday’s wider sweep on the record.

The sanctions picture is more tangled than VK’s denial suggests. While the corporate entity may not be listed, VK’s chief executive, Vladimir Kiriyenko, is under US, EU, and British sanctions.

He is the son of Sergei Kiriyenko, a senior Kremlin adviser. That distinction, between a sanctioned executive and an unsanctioned company, is the gap into which the dispute now falls.

None of this is unprecedented. Apple removed VKontakte from the App Store once before, in September 2022, after British sanctions, then restored access less than a month later.

The pattern suggests these removals can be reversed, and that the current standoff may be less a permanent break than another round in a long negotiation conducted through app listings.

What is new is the political volume. Peskov’s suggestion that Russians abandon iOS lands amid a years-long Kremlin push toward domestic software and hardware, and a steady erosion of Western platforms’ footing in the country.

Apple has previously acknowledged removing some 190 apps from the Russian App Store over three years under government pressure, a reminder that the platform has bent in both directions.

For now, the apps are gone and the explanation is not forthcoming. VK says millions of users are affected. The Kremlin says it is waiting. Apple, as is its habit in Russia, has said almost nothing at all.