Several applications owned by Russia's VK holding have been removed from the US company Apple’s App Store.
Medianews.az reports that among the deleted applications are Dzen, VK Video, VK Music, VK Messenger, Mail.ru, VK Dating (VK Знакомства), and Odnoklassniki. However, the main social network application VKontakte is still available to download on Apple devices.
VK company stated that the decision to delete the applications was made unilaterally and without prior warning from Apple.
VK’s statement notes that VK has never been under sanctions and has never been included in any sanctions list. The holding emphasized that it supports this with opinions from international and US lawyers. According to VK representatives, these legal opinions and other necessary information have long been provided to Apple.
Previously, on June 3, the Max messenger, part of the VK structure, was also removed from the App Store. The application became invisible in search results, and direct links started to result in errors.
At that time, Apple explained the removal of the Max application by compliance with sanctions legislation. The company stated it acts according to the laws of the countries where it operates.
This move caused a strong reaction in Russia. Mikhail Oseyevski called the Apple corporation an "enemy" and said this was a "completely unfriendly step" against the backdrop of promoting the Max messenger.
Russia's Minister of Digital Development Maksut Shadayev stated that 25-30 percent of the country's users utilize iOS devices, resulting in more than 20 million people losing access to the Max application.
According to Apple’s transparency report related to the App Store, 1,213 applications were removed from the Russian segment of the store in 2025. For comparison, 171 were removed in 2024, 12 in 2023, and only 7 in 2022. This statistic shows a sharp acceleration in the removal of applications from the Russian market in recent years.