Apple returns the Smart Voting app to its Russian app store

Apple has resumed allowing Russians to download an app, Smart Voting, run by supporters of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny after criticism that it was acceding to unreasonable government demands for censorship, according to The Washington Post.

In September 2021, Reuters reported that Apple and Google the Smart Voting”election app from the App Store and Google Play, in what an opposition spokesperson calls “political censorship.” Russia had demanded that the companies remove the tactical voting app and threatened fines.

Google later reinstated the app for Android phones soon after the election, while Apple did not. That changed this week, independent researchers and Navalny’s chief of staff, Leonid Volkov, told The Post.