In a series of pre-war moves, Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened Google and Apple executives to maintain his power and keep Russians in the dark.
According to The Washington Post, last September, Russian agents aligned with the FSB, a successor to the KGB, showed up at the home of Google's top executive in Moscow, presenting her with an ultimatum; either take down an app that had drawn the ire of Putin or be taken to jail in 24 hours.
The Russian app in question, known as the Smart Voting app, created under Putin's political rival Alexei Navalny, was designed with the goal of beating representatives of Putin's United Russia party. Since a takeover of the Duma, or the lower house for the Federal Assembly of Russia, would be next to impossible due to ballot manipulation, the app was designed to show Navalny supporters across the country candidates with the best chance of winning an election against state-backed rivals and thus edge out a small amount of opposition.
"Every meaningful, practical avenue for dissent is being systematically shut down," said Pavel Khodorkovsky, the founder of the Institute for Modern Russia. Khodorkovsky's father was also one of the original Russian oligarchs but was sent to prison after confronting Putin of corruption.
"I don't think it's an over dramatization to say that Putin is longing for a return to Soviet Union times," he added.
Within hours of threats, an app designed to cultivate dissent could no longer be downloaded from Google or Apple.
But despite the threats to the Big Tech employees, Google decided to keep its employees in Russia. Apple kept it's employees as well. Both with intentions of somehow appeasing the Kremlin. For Google, reports of negotiations are ongoing on what is known in Russia as the landing law, which went into full effect in January 2022. The law would require companies such as Google to register as legal entities whereby they would be held responsible or risk punishment if they fail to dispel a user's private information or fail or censor content that violates Russian law.
Apple last year began assembling iPhones that promote Kremlin-backed social media companies. Recently, VKontakte, a Russian equivalent of Facebook, became majority-owned by Russian state-run energy company Gazprom.
Some experts are baffled as to why.
Sergey Sanovich, a postdoctoral scholar at Princeton University who's been tracking the Kremlin crackdown, says, "what is the reason at this point to accommodate the Russian government? I'm not sure what [Apple] has in Russia that they are trying to protect at this point."
So far, the Russian censorship and disinformation campaigns seem to be working, as is reflected in a poll, whereby 58% of Russians support the war in Ukraine, with 23% opposing it.
Additionally, Apple has not responded to the Post on the matter. Google, in response, has pointed toward a blog that reflects its stances on the war in Ukraine.
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