Apple has to comply with local laws, regardless of who authored the code.
It makes one wonder who or what made this demand worth fulfilling for Apple, but it could just as easily be someone incompetent at Apple blindly fulfilling a takedown request from the Russian government because it's in their job description to follow such demands and they didn't realize that a simple app takedown request had significant geopolitical implications. Who knows. Either way, Apple has definitely strayed far from the vision of their 1984-themed commercial back in the day where they shattered big brother with a hammer...
Is this a removal of a feature?
Apps you can decline? And uninstall? We are talking about quite different things here. Not to mention every Android with pre-installed bloatware.
If you do opt-out, does anybody get notified? Is it reasonable users are concerned somebody might get notified?
There's a lot going on there. And just to point out, this has moved on from saying Apple only removing features, to debating how bad the features they've added are.
> users will be offered a choice of applications from Russian developers, which they will be able to choose for further installation on their iPhone or iPad