Apple Blocks VK and Max: What It Means for Russia

If you already have VKontakte or Max installed on an iPhone in Russia, the app stays on your device and still opens. What you lose is the supply line. You cannot download the app fresh, you cannot reinstall it if you delete it, and you will not receive updates through the App Store.

The sharper blow is push notifications. Apple has shut down push notifications from both apps. For a messenger, that is close to a kill switch in slow motion. Without push, a messaging app cannot alert you to a new message unless you open it and check manually, so a tool built for instant communication quietly stops being instant.

If you rely on either app inside Russia, treat the installed version as a temporary, degraded copy. No updates means no security patches over time, and that is a risk that grows the longer the app sits frozen on your phone.

Why VK says this makes no sense

VK Group, the developer behind VKontakte, came out swinging. In its own statement it said Apple removed the VK apps from the App Store without warning or explanation.

The company's core argument is that it is clean on paper. VK says it has never been subject to sanctions and has never appeared on any sanctions list, a point it says is backed by numerous legal opinions from international and US counsel. According to VK, Apple already held those legal opinions and all relevant information, and still removed the apps unilaterally without prior notice. VK called the move unjustified and unacceptable.

Apple has not publicly explained the decision, which leaves a gap that both VK and the Kremlin are filling with their own framing.

The bigger picture: Russia loves bans, but only the ones it picks

There is a heavy dose of irony here, and it is worth sitting with.

Russia is, by a wide margin, the world's most aggressive demander of app removals. Apple's 2025 App Store Transparency Report shows Russia asked Apple to remove 1,213 apps in 2025, far ahead of second-place Vietnam at 335. Many of the apps Russia wants gone are VPNs, the exact tools people use to slip past the country's internet censorship.

So the Russian state is happy to see apps pulled, as long as they are the apps it dislikes. It wants VPNs and what it calls degenerate software removed, while keeping its own strong apps like VKontakte and Max fully available. Max in particular has been described by an exile publication as packed with surveillance tooling, including a neural network aimed at eavesdropping.

Apple blocking VK and Max flips that arrangement. For once, the apps disappearing are the ones the Kremlin wants people to use, and Russia has almost no leverage to reverse it.

How Apple's reach compares before and after the block

What happens next over the coming 24 to 72 hours

Expect the pressure to stay public and rhetorical rather than technical.

• More statements, little action. Peskov has already conceded the obvious: there is little Russia can practically do to force Apple's hand. So the likely path is continued public criticism aimed at Apple's credibility rather than any move that actually restores the apps to iOS.
• A hard push toward Android. The Kremlin's own answer is to route users off iPhones entirely. Peskov's message was blunt: there is always an immediate solution, switch to Android, switch to Russian systems and equivalent services, and keep using what you love.
• Android stays the escape hatch. VK Group stresses that its Android apps remain fully functional, including updates and notifications, through RuStore, Google Play, Huawei AppGallery, Samsung Store, Xiaomi Store, and its official websites. On Android, none of this block applies.
• Watch for an Apple explanation, or pointed silence. The single biggest open question is whether Apple says anything at all. As of now it has not, and continued silence would itself be a signal about how it views the Russian market.

For ordinary iPhone users in Russia, the practical takeaway is simple and slightly bleak. The apps you have will keep limping along without updates or alerts, the App Store will not give them back, and the only clean fix on offer is the one the government is loudly recommending: leave iOS behind.

Source: Ars Technica