Putin's officials have their iPhones "taken away": the Kremlin is afraid of spies

Roman Kostyuchenko Life20.03.2023 12:30

Kremlin officials have their iPhones "taken away"

Employees of Putin's administration who will be involved in the 2024 presidential election campaign will have to get rid of their iPhones - they are required to do so by April 1. The reason is the widespread belief among the Russian authorities that these gadgets are more susceptible to hacking and espionage by Western specialists than other smartphones.

Instead of iPhones, Kremlin officials were "recommended" to use phones running Android, its Chinese counterparts or Aurora. "The latter was developed by the Russian company Open Mobile Platform, a subsidiary of Rostelecom," the Russian media reported.

In addition to employees of the Putin administration's internal political bloc, officials of regional internal political blocs will also be instructed to get rid of iPhones. The conditional internal political bloc itself, it is emphasised, includes four departments:

for Domestic Policy;
of Public Projects;
for Supporting the Activities of the State Council;
for the Development of Information and Communication Technologies and Communication Infrastructure.

"Employees of the first three departments will be involved in the 2024 presidential election campaign, preparations for which intensified in early 2023," the article says.

This is not the first time

Earlier, the Russian federal authorities "drew the attention" of governors and federal executive bodies to "the need to use exclusively domestic instant messaging tools in their official activities". A little later, Russian officials were advised to stop using Zoom in favour of the local Trueconf.

At the same time, the Russian Federation intends to create a "sovereign mobile ecosystem" based on technologies independent of Western IT giants. "The Aurora OS was developed according to this logic.
...There are several non-public orders from the president regarding it," the authors of the article note.

As OBOZREVATEL reported, meanwhile, the Chinese marketplace AliExpress has blocked the sale of drones to customers from Russia. At the same time, the already purchased devices are limited in functionality.

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