Since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, Vladimir Putin has been on the move across the Russian Federation to protest the war or the Kremlin’s “deliberately misinformation” He passed new and brutal laws, including fines and prison terms, to spread what he said. However, Putin’s agents were already at work to intimidate the executives of big tech companies like Apple and Google before the first tank crossed the border.
A new Washington Post report reveals how the former KGB spy has worked to crush domestic opposition, sometimes by going directly to the sources of tools citizens can use to express their true opinions. Last September, after a Smart Voting app associated with Putin’s nemesis, Alexei Navalny, was made available to Russians so they could record protest votes against Putin’s actions, agents frightened a female Google executive into coming to her Moscow home to humiliate her. They gave him a period of 24 hours. While Google quickly took measures to keep him safe, including placing him in a hotel under a pseudonym, agents from the FSB, presumably the KGB’s successor, found the director and reported that his time was almost up. Smart Voting would have been arrested if it hadn’t gone by the enforced deadline.
Google and apple, uninstalled the app shortly after. The post says the incident and others like it have not been widely reported, but have been going on for some time as part of Putin’s efforts to dispel domestic opposition. Russia has been scrupulous, if any, and the additional measures listed in the article make this clear. These include blocking access to social media sites like Facebook or Twitter, imposing large fines on any company that doesn’t cooperate with censorship, and even, according to the Post, There is an order from the 13 largest technology companies in the world to keep their employees in Russia.” so they were able to respond to their employer’s actions – the Post’s American tech executives “hostage law” something he said.
The invasion of Ukraine and intense pressure from Putin, combined with the measures taken by companies as well as the US and NATO, have created something that means an entirely different reality within the borders of the gigantic nation. Russian polls, in which the Post is unreliable, reflect this. The majority of Russians seem to support the war, and Ukrainians with their Russian relatives have reported astonishing conversations that their relationship justifies the war as fully justified – if they truly believe it is happening.
Alexei NavalnyAfter an objection from the founding of Google, Google has made the Smart Voting app available again. This means that Navalny’s people, currently in Lithuania, can send messages to Russians using Android phones. But Apple’s Navalny representative Leonid VolkovHe reportedly said in his response that the issue is still under investigation. For now, iPhone users in Russia are apparently seeing what Vladimir Putin wants them to see.