As sanctions continue to pile up against Russia against its attack on Russia, Apple has announced that it has stopped selling its products through its Apple Stores in the country. Other businesses of Western origin have taken similar actions as Russia continues its attack on Ukraine. Businesses, banks, and global financial institutions are cutting ties off with the country.
On Tuesday, the smartphone giant said that it has also removed Russian state-controlled outlets RT News and Sputnik News from its App Store in every country apart from Russia.
In a statement from an Apple Spokesperson, “We have taken a number of actions in response to the invasion. We have paused all product sales in Russia. Last week, we stopped all exports into our sales channel in the country. Apple Pay and other services have been limited. RT News and Sputnik News are no longer available for download from the App Store outside Russia. And we have disabled both traffic and live incidents in Apple Maps in Ukraine as a safety and precautionary measure for Ukrainian citizens”.
Other companies that have halted sales in Russia include Dell, which stopped sales in Ukraine too, Nike and Ford which stopped its joint venture operations in the country.
Yesterday, Visa and Mastercard blocked Russian banks and financial institutions from their networks.
Ukraine’s Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Federov, last week urged various cryptocurrency platforms to block the accounts of Russian users. While a few platforms have followed the plea, Binance said it isn’t blocking Russian users on its platform, it assured Ukraine that it is “taking the steps necessary to ensure we take action against those that have had sanctions levied against them while minimizing impact to innocent users”. The CEO of crypto platform Kraken, another platform, said that the company “cannot freeze the accounts of our Russian clients without a legal requirement to do so”.
So far, Ukraine has raised more than $10 million in crypto donations. NGOs supporting the military have also raised more than $4 million.
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Ibhadojemu Lucky Emmanuel is a graduate of Education and Economics from the University of Benin. He has a passion for tech and business and has been writing professionally for over a period of five years. He's written across various topics and segments and knew tech-business was it when he first stumbled on it. He has a great passion for music and arts, and wants to visit as many countries as he can someday.
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