An iOS app from the supporters of one prominent Putin critic is back on Apple's Russian App Store.
A recent report from The Washington Post mentioned that the Smart Voting app run by the supporters of Putin's critic, Alexei Navalny, makes a return to Apple's Russian App Store after it was forcibly removed by the Russian government almost seven months ago.
The Washington Post's report cited independent researchers and Navalny's chief of staff Leonid Volkov as the source of its information.
Smart Voting App's Resurrection Details
A report from The Verge mentioned that Apple did not respond to the publication's request for comment regarding Smart Voting's return to the Russia App Store. However, the decision is consistent with Apple's move of steering clear of Russia after the country's president, Vladimir Putin, chose to invade the neighboring country of Ukraine, a country Putin says to be "imprisoned by mythic fascists," per The Guardian.
Interestingly, Apple previously stopped product sales in Russia due to the continuing political turmoil, leaving Russian customers unable to purchase iPhones, iPads, Macs, and other Apple products online.
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In relation, it should be noted that the Russian government, specifically the Roskomnadzor, previously forced Apple and Google with fines to remove the app from their respective mobile app stores in September 2021. Russia's internet watchdog alleged that keeping the app on their mobile app stores constituted election interference, according to a separate report from The Verge.
Navalny's Smart Voting app has over a thousand endorsements of Russian political candidates with the idea of helping citizens consolidate votes against the ruling United Russia party which has Putin as its de facto leader.
Although Apple waited until recently to resurrect the app into its Russian App Store, Google restored the app shortly after Russia's election.
Apple and Google Are Not Alone
The two tech giants are not the only ones combating Russia's digital iron curtain. Other websites were reported to have made similar attempts to ensure their content would be able to penetrate Russia's great firewall, such as BBC and Twitter.
These two companies, for their part, launched or promoted versions of their sites that are compatible with the censorship-resistant web browser Tor, also known as The Onion Router.
The Tor web browser is known for its ability to prevent someone from watching a user's internet activity and history, making it the ideal website to slip past the Russian firewall. It also has multi-layered encryption that relays and encrypts a user's internet traffic three times as it passes over the web browser's network.
On the other side of the coin, the hacker collective Anonymous is also combatting Russia's censors through their hacks. It previously hacked into Russian streaming services Wink and Ivi, as well as live TV channels Russia 24, Channel One, and Moscow 24 to broadcast war footage from Ukraine.
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