Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Apple said on Tuesday that it has halted the sale of its goods in the country and taken a number of additional actions in response.
“As a safety and precautionary measure for Ukrainian citizens,” Apple stated that it had removed two Russian state-run media platforms from the Apple App Store outside of Russia, as well as stopped all exports into its Russian sales channel last week.
Apple has also “restricted” the usage of Apple Pay “and other services” in Russia, according to the company.
We are profoundly worried about the Russian invasion of Ukraine and stand with all of the people who are suffering as a consequence of the bloodshed, according to a statement released by the corporation on Monday morning.
In addition, Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s minister of digital transformation, highlighted the company’s activities on the messaging network Telegram, according to the company.
Thanks to Apple’s chief executive, Mr. Fedorov wrote in Ukrainian, “Apple has ceased selling its equipment on Russia’s official online shop.” Mr. Fedorov cited Tim Cook as the source for his statement. After a short while, individuals began tweeting images of Apple goods checkout pages, with messages indicating that the items were not now available.
Whether or not to comply with requests from Russia and Western nations to restrict disinformation and state-run media on their platforms is a point of contention for tech corporations.
According to a statement released on Monday, the parent company of Facebook, Meta, would block access to Russia Today and Sputnik across the European Union. Sputnik and Russia Today-related YouTube channels will be blocked throughout Europe, according to a blog post published Tuesday by Google, the company that controls YouTube.
Following Google’s announcement that it would block YouTube channels from RT and Sputnik in Europe, the company announced that it would no longer allow Russian state-funded media to appear in Google News and other related news properties, such as Top News and the News tab, as well as in other Google properties.
