Google Play pulls VK, Odnoklassniki, Mail.ru, and Max after EU sanctions

Google Play removed four Russian apps on July 16 — VKontakte, Odnoklassniki, Mail.ru, and the Max messenger — following EU sanctions published three days earlier. The EU designated VK and its subsidiary Communication Platform LLC on July 13, citing FSB supervision of Max's development and its use to surveil users who criticize Russia's war in Ukraine. For anyone still running these apps, they still work — but updates and push notifications are gone.

Why Max is the key target

Max is not a typical social app. According to the EU's official designation, it is pre-installed on every phone sold in Russia by legal mandate and gives Russian security services extensive access to user data: VPN usage, contacts, and geolocation. The EU's reasoning is straightforward — Max was built under FSB oversight and functions as a surveillance tool. Russian officials deny those claims, but the sanctions text is specific about the technical capabilities involved.

VK CEO Vladimir Kiriyenko is already under sanctions from the US, EU, and UK. His father, Sergei Kiriyenko, is one of Putin's senior policy advisors — a connection that has reinforced arguments about state control of the platform.

Apple moved first, Google followed

Apple pulled the same apps from its App Store earlier: Max disappeared in early June, followed by VKontakte, Odnoklassniki, and Mail.ru on June 25. At the time, Apple did not publicly name specific sanctions as the reason. Google waited until the EU list was formally published on July 13 before acting, according to The Record — a three-day turnaround that suggests reactive rather than proactive compliance.

The gap between the two companies' timelines points to a broader inconsistency: users received different explanations depending on which platform they used, and the same apps stayed available on Android for nearly a month after disappearing from iOS.

What changes now

For users in the US and UK, the practical impact is minimal — these apps were never mainstream here. The bigger effect is on Russia's information infrastructure. Without access to Google Play or the App Store, Max cannot push updates to new users outside Russia. Android users in Russia can still download apps via RuStore, the state-backed alternative store. But the removal cuts off any remaining route to normalizing these apps on Western platforms, and the EU sanctions framing makes a reversal legally complicated for both Google and Apple.