App removed before vote

Opposition campaigners in Russia have accused Google and Apple of caving in to ‘‘Kremlin blackmail’’ after they deleted a technical voting app from their online stores as parliamentary elections began yesterday. Supporters of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny had designed the Smart Voting app to advise voters which candidates had the best chance of beating pro-Kremlin candidates – but it disappeared from the Google and Apple web stores as the three-day vote began. The elections are taking place amid one of the most determined Kremlin campaigns to extinguish political opposition in the postSoviet era. Navalny, who survived a poisoning attack blamed on Kremlin agents, is in a penal colony, while anyone else likely to pose a threat to President Vladimir Putin has been prevented from running.