Digital Sovereignty and Communications in the Era of Sanctions and Restrictions on Access to Information: the Removal of the MAX and VK Apps from the App Store and the TikTok Ban

The subject of the study is the communicative dimension of digital sovereignty under sanctions-related restrictions and the removal of mass-market digital services from app stores. The empirical core comprises two Russian cases of 2026: the removal of the national messenger MAX from the App Store on 3 June 2026, and the removal on 25 June 2026 of a group of apps owned by the VK holding – the social networks VKontakte and Odnoklassniki, the content platform Dzen, the educational platform Skillbox, and a number of other services. These cases are examined in comparison with international precedents of restricting access to applications: the blocking of 59 Chinese apps in India in 2020, the "divest-or-ban" statutory mechanism applied to TikTok in the United States in 2024–2026, the removal of VPN services from the Chinese segment of the App Store in 2017, and the deplatforming of the Parler network in the United States in 2021. The methodological framework rests on a comparative analysis of multiple cases and a qualitative media discourse analysis of news reports, official statements by the parties involved, and regulatory acts; the cases are compared by initiator, legal basis, stated rationale, type of sovereignty claim, and communicative consequences. The main conclusions of the study are the following: an app store acts as a control node (gatekeeper) of the national communicative environment, while the removal of a service constitutes not only a technical and legal act but also a media event that alters the conditions of audience access to information; the sovereignization of the national communicative environment has clear limits as long as the "last mile" of distribution remains under the control of a foreign platform; the communicative damage is concentrated in the sphere of reach and engagement, whereas a structurally identical act receives competing frames of legitimation from the state, the platform, and the developer company; on the practical level, the diversification of communication channels, the development of sovereign distribution, and the preparation of crisis-communication scenarios are substantiated. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the fact that the removal of apps from app stores is for the first time considered as an autonomous communicative mechanism for contesting digital sovereignty, while the Russian cases of 2026 reveal an inversion of the conventional model of sovereignization, in which the removing actor is a foreign platform, whereas the national state and domestic companies find themselves on the receiving end.