In the Russian Federation, officials have increased state purchases of iPhones by four times – mass media

Officials from Russia spent four times more budget funds on the purchase of iPhones, despite the massive ban on American smartphones. This is written by The Moscow Times, reports  Economic Truth.

According to the results of nine months of 2024, the volume of state purchases of iPhones was four times greater than in the same period last year: 6,879,899 rubles against 1,642,166 rubles.

Part of the government purchases of iPhones was justified by the impossibility of complying with the ban on the use of foreign software available on these devices. So, for example, in one of the applications it was stated that the main criterion for the purchase of iPhone 13 is the presence of a specialized Voice Over program, which voices programs and enables blind and partially sighted users to work with the gadget.

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A large part of government purchases fell on companies with state participation. The largest purchase of Apple smartphones this year – for more than 3 million rubles – was made by the St. Petersburg company “Teploenergo” LLC.

Also, “Aeroexpress” LLC bought an iPhone for 517 thousand rubles. But the state Kremlin Palace was also among the customers, it bought American smartphones for 830,000 rubles.

Government authorities began to impose a ban on the use of iPhones in the summer of 2023, when the FSB together with the FSO announced the infection of several thousand Apple smartphones with an American spy virus that tracked Russian users.

After that, officials in the Kremlin, the government, state departments and employees of state companies were forced to abandon the use of iPhones for official purposes en masse. In particular, the ban was introduced in the Ministry of Transport, the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the Ministry of Digital Affairs, the Ministry of Health, Rostec, Rosaviatsia, Russian Railways, Kamaaz, etc.