Russia and Belarus are losing their apps

Since Putin’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, numerous companies have shut down business in Russia, including McDonald’s, Netflix, and Upwork.

Some of these moves are now apparent on Apple’s App Store.

Apple regularly removes old and outdated apps. In the 1st 2 weeks of February, ~3.4k apps disappeared from both the US and Russian App Stores, per TechCrunch.

But between Feb. 24 and March 14…

• ~7k apps vanished from Russia’s App Store, a 105% increase.
• Russian ally Belarus also saw a 73% increase in App Store removals.

Gone are several gaming, health, music, and productivity apps — plus, loyalty apps for brands no longer doing business in Russia.

Yet, there is one type of app that’s super hot right now: VPNs, which Russians are likely using to get around Putin’s ban on social media.

The top 10 VPN apps saw 4.2m installs in those same 2 weeks, a 2.2k%+ increase.