Can you please describe what it means to "bend a knee"? It sounds like following the local laws to me. Do you mean something else? What else they are supposed to do? Act as a rough agent? Be the East India Company of the century, recruit mercenaries and compel foreign nations to work they see fit?
There is no law in Russia that prevents Apple from hosting an app called Navalny published by Roman Rubanov. The content of the app is also legal even by Russian standards: it is basically a list of officially registered candidates supported by Navalny.
Maybe you should e-mail Apple and tell them. Give them a law and a business lesson.
Anyway, the idea is that legal or not, it's up to the Russian people to create the environment. Maybe it's legal according to the text(I wouldn't know, not a Russian lawyer) but due to the corruption and power distribution maybe Putin can simply do whatever he wants. A gadget company cannot fix this, if you like to fix it you need to fix it yourself and then you can have companies publishing the Apps you like.
You cannot delegate the job of creating a government and juridical system that has integrity to an American company. It's unreasonable to expect such a thing.
