Elections in Russia: Putin’s regime blocked an app that encourages voting for any party except the ruling party

Some Russian cell phone users were unable to download updates from the AppStore on Monday and Apple has reported a decline in service as authorities seek to block a banned tactical voting app ahead of this week’s congressional election.

The Kremlin is attacking online resources linked to jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny and technology used to circumvent online content bans., which caused significant drops in internet service ahead of the September 17-19 election.

Roskomnadzor, the state’s communications regulator, has called on a number of US companies, including Apple, to stop providing the Navalny team with the means to bypass its blockages.. The application is prohibited because the Navalny movement was banned during the boreal summer by to be considered an extremist.

The Navalny team said on Monday that many people reported issues downloading their app, what do you want to use to organize a tactical voting campaign to strike a blow at the ruling United Russia party, without the aid of a virtual private network.

“Roskomnadzor has stopped installing app updates from the AppStore in Russia”, Leonid Volkov, an ally of Navalny, wrote on Telegram.

Apple support in Russia showed that an AppStore outage occurred between 11 a.m. and 5:10 p.m. local time (0800 and 1410 GMT), a period during which users may have had issues with the service.

In this direction, Navalny sued the prosecutor’s office and Roskomnadzor, for blocking, among other websites, their website “Voto Inteligente” before the legislative elections on Sunday. The Tverskoi court in Moscow today confirmed that it had received the complaint, but said there was still no date for the hearing.

September 6 Roskomnadzor blocked ‘Smart Vote’ website to promote the activities of the Navalny Anti-Corruption Fund, an organization considered extremist by Russian justice in June. It was the opposition leader’s last website which had not yet been blocked by the authorities. since his sentence to two and a half years in prison last February.

Navalny called on Russians in prison to vote for candidates who challenge the Kremlin party, United russia, whose voting intention does not exceed 30% according to polls.

In order to prevent the victory of the ruling party, the opponent urged to join the campaign “Smart Vote”, which consists of supporting the candidate who has the best chance of defeating the ruling party in each region of the country, whether liberal, communist or nationalist.

The authorities consider that this campaign, which led to the overthrow of the ruling party of several regional parliamentary assemblies, is “An instrument of foreign interference in Russian elections.”

According to some analysts, The ‘smart vote’, which succeeded in reducing the number of deputies of the ruling Moscow State Duma from 38 to 25 in 2019, may influence election results in majority constituencies.

So, according to the opposition, Authorities have launched an intimidation campaign against hundreds of people linked to Navalny’s regional networks and have flooded the internet with many bogus apps similar to Smart Vote.

Besides, Roskomnadzor threatened Google and the Russian search engine Yándex with heavy fines if they did not block access to the “Smart Vote” site..

Russia has criticized US giants like Google, Facebook and Twitter in recent months. for violating Russian law regarding the publication of prohibited content. Specifically, these platforms published at the beginning of the year calls from Navalny and his supporters to demonstrate against the Kremlin. For this reason, these companies have been reprimanded and fined.

(With information from Reuters and EFE)

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