Apple has temporarily stopped selling products in Russia. The company itself says it feels compelled to take this step because of Russia’s brutal attack on Ukraine.
Apple is temporarily abandoning the Russian sales market. “We have stopped all sales in Russia. Last week we blocked all exports to our outlets in the country,” a press release reads, reports The Verge. The measure applies to both the Russian webshop and physical sales.
Last week, Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine Mykhailo Fedorov called on the tech giant to stop providing services or products to Russia. In an open letter, he expressed his belief that this would mobilize the Russian people to protest.
Additional measures
Apple earlier decided to allow its own payment system, Apple Pay, to have limited usability in Russia. In the App Store, Apple blocked the download option of two Russian channels for those not in Russia. For security reasons, Apple also disabled live traffic data on Apple Maps. Google made the same decision regarding Google Maps.
Fedorov asked Apple to completely ban Russians from the App Store, but Apple has not responded to that request until now.
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