Apple removed 2,045 apps from the App Store in 2025 at the request of government authorities — in more than half of those cases, at the direction of Roskomnadzor. The figures come from Apple’s annual transparency report, which the independent Russian investigative outlet iStories was among the first to flag.
Russia led all countries by a wide margin. Russian authorities demanded the removal of 1,213 apps from the App Store in 2025.
The next countries on the list were Vietnam (335 apps), China (196), South Korea (108), India (54), and the United States (39).
In 2024, Apple removed 171 apps in Russia; in 2023, it removed 12; and in 2022, just seven.
Apple does not disclose which specific apps were removed. iStories believes the removals primarily involved VPN services — an assessment indirectly supported by data from Google, which in 2025 received 801 demands from Roskomnadzor to remove services used to circumvent internet blocks.
In Russia, demand for VPNs surged sharply amid the blocking of YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Telegram. In response, Russian authorities intensified their efforts to combat circumvention of the blocks. For example, by mid-April, major Russian internet platforms, at the authorities’ request, restricted the ability to use their sites and apps while connected to a VPN.
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