Apple swept nearly the entire VK ecosystem out of the App Store in a single day, and the government immediately found a solution for you. Seemingly all apps were affected, including the completely innocent “Mail.ru Mail”. The solution is embarrassingly simple, but it doesn’t quite work the way it sounds.
No VK — a reason to switch to Android. Or not?
Which VK Apps Were Removed from the App Store
On June 25, Apple without warning removed virtually the entire set of VK services from the App Store. Gone from the store were VKontakte, VK Video, VK Music, VK Messenger, Dzen, Odnoklassniki, Mail.ru mail, and about a dozen smaller apps, all the way down to Marusia, Mail Cloud, and Yula. Downloading them on iPhone is now impossible, and so is updating them.
All VK apps have been removed
VK itself emphasizes an important detail: the company is not under sanctions and has never appeared on any sanctions lists. According to the holding company, legal opinions from international and American lawyers have long been sitting on Apple’s desk. But the apps were removed anyway, unilaterally and without explanation.
This isn’t the first wave. Earlier in June, the national messenger MAX disappeared from the App Store, and at the time Apple cited sanctions without specifying which ones. And if you dig deeper, since 2022, Russian software has been systematically purged from the store: first state media, then major banks, followed by transportation services and marketplaces. VK simply turned out to be next in line.
What Will Happen to VK Apps on iPhone After Removal
Let me reassure you right away: apps that are already installed on your phone haven’t gone anywhere and continue to work. There’s no need to urgently save anything.
The problem lies elsewhere. Updating a removed app through the App Store is no longer possible, and along with updates, some features will eventually break. But the more unpleasant issue is with notifications. When an app disappears from the store, iOS revokes the token through which push notifications reach the phone. The server simply can’t reach the device anymore. In practice, this means you’ll only see a new message or call in VK Messenger when you manually open the app yourself.
Even VKontakte was removed
The same problem previously happened with MAX: the messenger team seriously advised iPhone owners to open the app more frequently. It sounds like mockery, but technically there’s no other way to receive push notifications on iOS after removal. If MAX is critical for you, there’s a way to restore notifications in one minute, but it’s a half-measure.
So the main risk isn’t that something will disappear right now. It’s that your iPhone is quietly turning into a device where half of the usual Russian services stop delivering notifications properly.
Why Russians Are Being Advised to Switch from iPhone to Android
Now for the most interesting part. The situation was commented on by presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov, and the advice was as specific as it gets: switch to Android or to “our systems” and use VK services in peace.
The first part is hard to argue with. On Android, VK apps are available in full, with updates and notifications, and across multiple stores at once: RuStore, Google Play, Huawei AppGallery, Samsung Store, Xiaomi Store, and on official websites. Everything is fair here — the problem is solved by simply switching smartphones.
The second part, however, is more complicated. “Our systems” with a full-fledged app ecosystem comparable to iOS or Android simply don’t exist yet. It’s a beautiful phrase with no ready product behind it that you can pick up and use instead of an iPhone. So the only actually workable advice here is about Android, which has been perfectly capable of opening VKontakte without any recommendations from above.
Peskov also expressed doubt about Apple’s reliability as a service provider and promised that Russia would request an explanation from the company, and if no answer comes, would draw conclusions about further cooperation. The chair of the relevant State Duma committee, Sergei Boyarsky, called the removal politically motivated and recalled that Steve Jobs built Apple on respect for users worldwide. A beautiful argument, but it unfortunately adds nothing to a working notification in a messenger.
Is It Worth Switching from iPhone to Android in 2026
Short answer: don’t rush. If you live within the Apple ecosystem, keep your photos, notes, and subscriptions there, and are used to how everything works together, breaking that setup over one messenger is strange. VK on iPhone hasn’t disappeared — it just stopped updating and buzzing with notifications. For many, that’s quite tolerable.
Make sure to turn off this toggle
What you should actually do right now is not delete the installed VK apps from your phone. Also check your settings and disable automatic offloading of unused apps, otherwise iOS will eventually remove the app you need on its own, and you won’t be able to get it back from the App Store. That’s two minutes that will save you unnecessary headaches.
Beyond that, it all depends on how much you need these services every day. If you already have one foot in Android or have been eyeing it for a while, this story is perhaps one more reason. But if your iPhone fully satisfies you, just carry on: you can keep critical apps open in the background, check important things manually, and go for notifications where they arrive without glitches.
The advice from the Kremlin, frankly, changes very little. Everything it suggests has been working on Android for years without any prompting. And for iPhone owners, what’s far more useful than loud statements is understanding the simple mechanics: as long as an app isn’t in the App Store, there will be no proper push notifications on iOS. That’s what you should base any decisions on.
