Just like with China, Apple will simply roll over, like an obedient puppy, and do whatever's asked of them.<p>It's funny how Apple only punches down - against app devs or other companies that it can bully, but the moment it faces a formidable adversary (China, Russia, ..), it cowers to safety.
My cynical view on this is that Russia is preparing for a conflict where they can cut ties with western infrastructure, while keeping themselves covered by domestic alternatives. It plays well with their efforts to boost robustness of their local internet under a severance from the rest of the world.
We need to take these foreign stories as serious cautionary tales. For anybody who has been in doubt so far, this is what all this surveillance tech looks like as soon as the government decides it wants to gain power with it
"Others have raised concerns that the Russian-made software could be used to spy on users." ..ehm right, because there's no spying on user activities when you use google's preinstalled apps :/
Well, looks like they are planning to do this not just with smartphones, but also with smart TVs and even computers. (I guess the latter means that you wouldn't be allowed to install and use an OS that is not supported by the required software.)
For Russian users this is actually beneficial. You see, they have their own "Google" that serves that market much better: Yandex. The first thing I did when I bought my mom a smartphone there is I installed Yandex launcher and a bunch of other Yandex stuff - out of the box it's unusable to anyone beyond age 30. Not only is their search is better when searching the Russian-speaking segment of the internet, their local news, maps, etc are all better as well. Their maps, for instance, tell you where the speed cameras are on the highway so you could avoid a ticket. They even have their own voice assistant, and it works OK too.