Russian Politician Refuses to Give Up His iPhone After Apple Bans VK
When Western sanctions bite, the elite's love for luxury tech remains unshakable. Russian lawmakers are currently doing Olympic-level mental gymnastics to justify keeping their beloved iOS devices while the state regulator threatens Apple with billions in fines.
The head of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, Sergey Boyarsky, publicly admitted he is still clinging to his iOS device despite the tech giant systematically erasing Russian digital life. While acknowledging that Apple has turned into a closed ecosystem under political pressure, Boyarsky claimed there is no immediate reason to migrate to Android, which he ironically praised as a more "democratic" platform.
This political romance with American design persists even after Apple executed a massive digital purge on June 25, 2026, wiping the entire VK suite from the App Store. Overnight, millions of users lost access to downloads and updates for VKontakte, Odnoklassniki, Mail.ru mail, and various entertainment apps. Earlier that month, on June 3, Apple also booted the MAX app, prompting Rostelecom chief Mikhail Oseevsky to predict a mass exodus of Russian users to domestic Aurora OS or Android devices.
The Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service has given Apple a strict ultimatum until July 15, 2026, to allow domestic software pre-installation or face a staggering 4-billion-ruble fine.
Watching high-ranking state officials praise the democratic virtues of open-source software while refusing to let go of their status-symbol iPhones is a masterclass in political doublethink. It seems domestic OS initiatives like Aurora are destined to remain a forced diet for schoolteachers and low-level bureaucrats, while the decision-makers keep happily updating their prohibited capitalist gadgets.
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